March 8, 1877] 



NATURE 



395 



peculiarities, and has actually discovered some fast- 

 perishing dialects which had hitherto remained unknown. 

 His magnificent work on the Basque verb has, it may be 

 said, created the scientific philology of the language. 



Basque, or Eskuara (probably meaning "mode of speak- 

 ing "), as the Basques themselves call it, is an aggluti- 

 native tongue, postfixing, for the most part, the sounds 

 which express the relations of grammar. The grammar 

 would be simple were it not for the verb, at once the 

 wonder of native writers and the despair of foreign lin- 

 guists. The verb incorporates the pronouns, having a 

 different form for " I have," " I have it," " I have it for 

 you," &c., as well as (in some dialects) for addressing a 

 woman, a man, a superior, and an equal. It possesses 

 also three voices, two primary tenses, at least five moods, 

 and more than one participle or infinitive. When ana- 

 lysed these forms turn out to be amalgamations of the 

 verbal stem with various pronouns and modifying par- 

 ticles, but their origin is so obscured by phonetic decay, 

 and their number is so immense, that we cannot much 

 wonder if, according to the legend, the devil, having spent 

 seven years at Burgos in the vain attempt to learn the 

 language, was at last obliged to leave the Basques to their 

 primitive simplicity and virtue. The eight principal dialects 

 — Labourdin, Souletin, Eastern Bas-Navarrais, Western 

 Bas-Navarrais, Northern Haut-Navarrais, Southern Haut- 

 Navarrais, Guipuscoan, and Biscayan— differ a good deal 

 from one another, and the three sub-dialects of Spanish 

 Basque — Roncal, Aezcoan, and Salazarese, have yielded 

 to Prince Bonaparte interesting archaic forms and words. 

 It is unfortunate that our knowledge of Basque does not 

 reach back further than 1545, when the first book in the 

 language — the " Poems of Dechepare " — was printed, and 

 a restoration of earlier grammatical forms must therefore 

 rest solely upon a comparison of the existing dialects. 



The grammar of the Hungarian professor, which M. 

 Vinson has translated into French, is an extremely good 

 one, and its value has been increased by the introduction 

 he has prefixed to it, as well as by the notes he has added by 

 way of supplement and correction, and by a very useful and 

 almost exhaustive Basque bibliography he has appended 

 at the end. These notes will form the subject of an article 

 Prince Bonaparte is preparing for publication. Prof. 

 Ribary's exposition of the intricacies of Basque grammar 

 is singularly clear, and I know of no work from which 

 the foreign student could gain a better insight into the 

 machinery of the verb or a better key to its multitudinous 

 forms. Certain of these are compared with corresponding 

 forms in Magy.-ir, Vogul, and Mordvinian, which, like the 

 Basque, are able to incorporate the objective pronoun. 

 The volume may be heartily recommended for both scien- 

 tific and practical purposes. 



While the Basque language has been attracting so 

 much attention, the equally interesting and important 

 folk-lore of the country has been almost wholly neglected. 

 With the doubtful exception of Chaho, none of the 

 Basque legends were " even noticed till within the last 

 two years, when M. d'Abbadic read the legend of the 

 Tartaro before the Societd des Sciences et des Arts de 

 Bayonnc, and M, Cerquand his 'Ldgendes et Rdcits 

 Populaires du Pays Basque,' before the sister society at 

 Pau." Mr. Webster's book, therefore, is doubly welcome, 

 consisting as it does of tales and legends written down 



from the lips of the narrators, and literally translated into 

 English with the co-operation of M. Vinson. Mr. Webster 

 has divided the stories into (i) Legends of the Tartaro, 

 (2) of the Heren-Suge, or Seven-headed Serpent, (3) 

 animal tales, which are neither fables nor allegories, 

 (4) legends of Basa-Jauna, Basa- Andre, and other Lamiii- 

 ak, or fairies, (5) tales of witchcraft, (6) Contes des 

 Fees, and (7) religious legends. The Tartaro is a one- 

 eyed Cyclops, and what is told about him will interest 

 classical scholars. He lives in a cave among his flocks, 

 and is blinded with a red-hot spit by the hero, who con- 

 trives to escape by the help of the unsuspecting sheep. 

 In some versions the story of the talking ring is com- 

 bined with that of the Cyclops, and in one form of the 

 legend communicated to me by M. d'Abbadie, and alluded 

 to by Mr. Webster, the hero is made to fight with a body 

 without a soul. Grimm has quoted analogous stories to that 

 of the Cyclops, among the Oghuzian Turks, Karelians, and 

 others, and M. d'Abbadie heard an almost exactly simi- 

 lar one in Eastern Africa, while Mr. Moseley has pointed 

 out to me that the Chinese also have their "one-eyed people 

 who live to the east of Chuk Lung, and have one eye 

 in the centre of the face." (See my " Principles of Com- 

 parative Philology," second edition, pp. 321-323, and for 

 an account of a Mongolian Cyclops, Mr. Howorth, in the 

 Journal of the R.A.S., vii., 2 (1875}, p. 232.) It is within 

 the bounds of possibility that the Greek myth of the 

 Cyclops may have been borrowed by the colonists in 

 Sicily or the voyagers to Tartessus from some ancient 

 Basque population. However this may be, the legends 

 of the seven-headed serpent connect themselves very 

 strikingly with Western Asia. Accadian mythology had 

 much to tell of " a seven-headed serpent," the dragon of 

 Chaos, which tempted man to sin and waged war with 

 Merodach, the Chaldean Michael. The Indian Vritra 

 has but three heads, like the Orthros, the Kerberos, the 

 Ekhidna, and the Khimcera of the Greeks, but it is at least 

 curious that Orthros, with his master Geryon, was local- 

 ised at Cadiz in the later days of Greek mythology. 

 Basa Jauna, again, " the wild man of the woods," with his 

 wife Basa-Andre, though once represented as a kind of 

 vampire, is usually desci-ibed as a sort of Satyr, reminding 

 us not only of the classical Pan, but of the far older 

 Chaldean Hea-bani, the friend and councillor of the 

 Babylonian Herakles. Basa-Andre, says Mr. Webster, 

 " appears sometimes as a kind of mermaid, as a beautiful 

 lady sitting in a cave and ' combing her locks with a 

 comb of gold,' in remote mountain parts." 



On the whole, however, there is very little that is native 

 in these Basque legends, at least so far as their origin 

 and texture are concerned. As Mr. Webster has noticed, 

 I the resemblance of many of them to the Keltic stories of 

 the West Plighlands is too minute to be the result of 

 accident, while a large part of them is familiar to us in a 

 French or even a German form. How the Basques could 

 have borrowed Gaelic stories is at present not easy 

 to explain ; it is more probable, however, that this took 

 place through maritime intercourse at a comparatively 

 recent period than at some remote date when the ancestors 

 of the Kelts and the Basques may be supposed to have 

 lived in close proximity. The impression left upon the 

 mind by the legends Mr, Webster has collected is that 

 the Basques are neither imaginative nor original, and 



