158 REPORT — 1851. 



a grammatical identity between the Icelandic and Etruscan, which appears 

 to me to furnish an indisputable proof of affinitj'. 



No one can have read any of the Runic inscriptions without noticing the 

 constant occurrence of the auxiliary or causative verb lata ; thus we have : 

 Ltithsmother lit aliva stin aufti Julibirn Path : i. e. " Lithsmotherus incidi fecit 

 saxum in memoriam Julibirni patris." Thorstin lit gcra merki stir Suin 

 fathur sin : i. e. " Thorstinus notas fieri fecit in memoriam Suini patris sui." 

 Ulfkitil Ilk Ku uk Vni thir litu raisa stin iftir U If fathur sin : i. e. " Ulf- 

 kitillus et Bos et Unius, hi fecerunt extollere saxum in memoriam Suini pa- 

 tris sui." (See other instances in Dieterich's Runen- Sprach- Schatz, p. 372.) 

 Now here we have, as part of a constantly recurring phraseology, an auxiliary 

 verb signifying 'to let' or ' cause,' followed by an infinitive in -a. If then 

 we had nothing else to induce us to suppose that there was some connexion 

 between the Scandinavians and Etruscans, we should be struck by the coin- 

 cidence that the largest of the Etruscan inscriptions, that of Perugia, actually 

 begins with this phraseology : " eu lat tanna La Rezul amev achr Lautn 

 Velthinas." Of course there is no prima facie reason to conclude that tanna 

 is a vei-b ; on the contrary, I am well aware that it has been generally con- 

 sidered as a feminine prsenonien, found, for example, in the name Tana-quil. 

 It so happens, however, that I have recently been favoured with the means 

 of confirming the supposition which brings this celebrated record into contact 

 with the old Runic inscriptions. A small patera, brought from Chiusi by my 

 friend Mr. J. H. Porteus Oakes, and now in the Bury Museum, contains the 

 following legend: '^ stem tenilaeth nfatia," The very first glance at this 

 must convince us that tenilaeth is the third person of a transitive verb, the 

 nominative being Nfatia, probably the name of a woman (cf. Caphatial= Ca- 

 fatia natus in Dennis's Bilinguallnscription, ii. p. 475), and the accusative 

 being the pronoun stem for istam. The verb tenilaeth obviously belongs to the 

 same class of forms as the agglutinate or weak-perfects in Gothic, which are 

 formed by the affix of the causative -da, as soM-da, " I did seek" (Gabelentz u. 

 Lobe, Goth. Gramm. % 127). We have the same formation in the Latin ven-do, 

 pen-do, &c., and I have indicated the existence of a remarkable class of cau- 

 satives in -so, -sivi, as arces-so, capes-so, quce-so ( Varronian. p. 207>252). We 

 may therefore see that lat tanna represents as separate words what teni-laeth 

 exhibits in an agglutinate form, the auxiliary, in the lalter case, however, being 

 in the present tense, which in Gothic is formed in th ; and lat being a strong 

 perfect. With regard to the verb tana, tent, it is clearly the same as the 

 Icelandic the?i, at thenia=-tendere, O.H.G. danjan, denjan, A.-S. dJienjan, 

 N.H.G. dehnen, Gr. Teivw, tcivvm, Sanscrit tan-, and therefore signifies " to 

 ofier," like the Latin j^orrigo or porricio. As ten-do, which is an agglutinate 

 form quite analogous to this teni-lata, is really synonymous yi\t]\ porrigo* , we 

 have in the cognate and conterminous Latin and Etruscan languages a per- 

 fect compendium of ritual phraseology ; and stem tenilaeth Nfatia is quite 

 as near to istam ten-dit or porrigit Nefatia as we should a priori expect. 

 The Perugian inscription is, however, even nearer to the Runic than this 

 patera legend is to tlje Latin ; and the evidence furnished by the two, taken 

 together, seems to me conclusive. Without entering upon any lengthened 

 examination of the Perugian monument, I will only remark ihdXlautne, which 

 occurs in other Etruscan inscriptions (Vermiglioli, p. 64), is best translated 

 by a reference to the Icelandic laut-=locus defossus, so that the beginning of 

 the document will signify : " Here Lars Raesial let offer or give a sepulchral 

 (ama, Ice\.=ango) field as the grave of Felthina." As we have elsewhere 



* Thus we have (Cic. de Orat, i. 40, § 184) : " praesidium clientibus atque opem amiciset 

 prope cunctis civibus lucem ingenii et consilii %\i\ porrigentem atque tendentem." 



