616 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Pyrenees; but it must be confessed that no direct proof of its 

 existence can be found to-day, guide books to the contrary not- 

 withstanding. The domestic institutions are remarkably primi- 

 tive and well preserved.* Every man's house is indeed his cas- 

 tle. As Herbert puts it in his Keview of the Political State 

 of the Basque Provinces, speaking of Vizcaya : " No magistrate 

 can violate that sanctuary; no execution can be put into it, 

 nor can arms or horse be seized ; he can not be arrested for debt 

 or subjected to imprisonment without a previous summons to ap- 

 pear under the old oak of Guernica." The ties of blood are per- 

 sistently upheld among all the Basques. The women enjoy equal 

 rights before the law in many places. Customs vary from place 

 to place, to be sure, and primitive characteristics are not always 

 confined to the Basques alone. They are, however, well repre- 

 sented, on the whole. In some places the eldest daughter takes 

 precedence over all the sons in inheritance, a possible relic of the 

 matriarchal family which has disappeared elsewhere in Europe. 

 It would be out of place to enlarge upon these social peculiari- 

 ties in this place. It will be enough in passing to mention the 

 once noted mystery plays, the folklore, the dances, the week con- 

 sisting of but three days (as Webster asserts), and a host of other 

 facts, each capable of inviting attention from the ethnological 

 point of view. The only detail which it will repay us to elabo- 

 rate is the language. To that we turn for a moment. 



To the ordinary observer many peculiarities in the Basque 

 language are at once apparent ; x, y, and z seem to be unduly 

 prominent to play leading parts, in fact. There are more conso- 

 nants alone, to say nothing of the vowels and double characters, 

 than there are letters in our entire alphabet. For the linguist the 

 differences from the European languages are of profound sig- 

 nificance. The Basque conforms in its structure to but two other 

 languages in all Europe, each of which is akin to the linguistic 

 families of Asia and aboriginal America. It is formally like the 

 Magyar or Hungarian; but this we know to be an immigrant 

 from the East within historic times. It is also fashioned after 

 the model of the speech of the Finns in Kussia. These people 

 are likewise quite foreign to western Europe ; they are akin to 

 tribes which connect them with the Asiatic hordes. The Basque 

 alone of the trio is mysterious as to its origin ; for it constitutes 

 a linguistic island, surrounded completely by the normal popu- 

 lation and languages of Europe. 



In place of inflection, the Basque makes use largely of the so- 



* E. Cordier. De 1'Organisation de la Famille chez les Basques. Complete references 

 in detail by authors will be found in a Bibliography of the Ethno- Geography of Europe 

 shortly to be published in Bulletins of the Boston Public Library. 



