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NA TURE 



[SErXEMBER 24, 1908 



is a matter of common knowledge that the Anglo-Norman 

 settlers in a short time became Hiberniores ipsis Hibeniis. 



These and other examples too numerous to cite here 

 prove that the children of bodies of conquerors who marry 

 the women of the land w-ill have an inevitable tendency 

 to follow their mothers' speech. We may also lay down 

 as a solid factor in the tendency of the conqueror to merge 

 into the conquered the isolation of the conquerors from 

 their original homes and from the great mass of those who 

 speak the same language. 



Next we come to the case where the conquerors bring 

 with them some women of their own race. This of course 

 helps to keep their own language alive, as a certain number 

 of the children speak it as their mothers' tongue. But 

 even in these circumstances the invaders are liable to drop 

 their own language and practically adopt that of the 

 natives. Thus the Northmen who settled on the coast of 

 France gradually abandoned their national tongue for 

 French, though modifying dialectically their adopted 

 language. When under the name of Normans they con- 

 quered and settled in England, they again adopted the 

 language of the conquered, though modifying the English 

 tongue by many words and phrases brought with them 

 from Normandy, and we have just seen how some of their 

 descendants who settled in Ireland for the third time 

 changed their speech for that of the conquered. 



Hitherto ail our examples show the adoption by the 

 conquerors of the language of the conquered, even when 

 they bring a certain number of their women with them. 



We now come to undoubted cases where the language 

 of the conqueror has been able to get a firm foothold. 

 From the time of the plantation of Ulster, the advance of 

 the English tongue, and consequent decadence of the Irish, 

 has steadily proceeded, for the settlers, unlike Cromwell's 

 Ironsides, brought with them women of their own race and 

 speech. Consequently their children grew up speaking 

 English as their mothers' tongue. Yet even with such a 

 basis the advance of English amongst the Irish has been 

 exceedingly slow. In the glens of Antrim the Irish 

 language still lingers on, whilst in Donegal, Connaught, 

 Kerry, Cork, and Waterford, English has not succeeded 

 in ousting completely the native language, though the 

 former is the language of the national schools, of the 

 newspapers, and of trade. 



The story of the establishment of English itself in 

 Britain is just the same as in Ulster. We know from 

 Bede that the -Angles who settled in Britain left Holstein in 

 large bodies, bringing with them their wives and families, 

 and leaving their old homes without inhabitant. Having 

 thus settled in solid masses in the east of Britain, they 

 retained fully their own tongue, impressed it upon their 

 menials, and gradually, as they extended their conquests 

 westward over the island, English became the language 

 of the land. Yet in Wales the ancient speech stHl 

 flourishes. 



We may therefore conclude that the adoption bv the 

 con(|uered of the language of the conqueror, even when it 

 does take place, which is but rarely, is a very slow and 

 tedious process, although every advantage is on the side 

 of the invading tongue, and that when the native speech 

 gets a fair field, as in Wales, the language of the con- 

 queror can make little or no advance. 



Only the third possibility now is left — that one people 

 can adopt without conquest the language of another. But 

 no example of such can anywhere be found, although 

 Europe presents numerous instances to the contrarv. There 

 can be no stronger case than that of the Swiss Republic, 

 in which peoples with more than four kinds of language 

 combine for national defence and other advantages. Here, 

 if anywhere, we ought to find a gradual adoption bv certain 

 cantons of the language of their neighbours. But, far 

 from this being so, the German, French, Roumansch, and 

 Italian cantons rigidly preserve their respective mother- 

 speeches. In the .'\ustro-Hungarian Empire there is no 

 tendency observable on the part of either Magyars or Slavs 

 to adopt German ; nay, the very opposite is the case. 

 Again, the Finns have not adopted either Swedish or 

 Russian, though partitioned between their more powerful 

 neighbours. 



To sum up, it seems that no nation readilv adopts the 

 language of another, even though it be in close ties of 

 NO. 2030, VOL. 78] 



friendship ; whilst there is still less tendency when national 

 hostility intervenes. Secondly, the adoption of the language 

 of the conqueror by the conquered, except in the most 

 favourable circumstances, is not common, and only talies 

 place by a very gradual process, as is seen in the case 

 of Ireland. Thirdly, there is a strong tendency for the 

 conqueror to adopt the language of the conquered, as was 

 done by the Normans in England, in Ireland, in Sicily, 

 and in Italy ; by the Cromwellian settlers in Tipperary, by 

 the Bulgari in Bulgaria, by the Franks in Gaul, by the 

 Lombards in Italy, and by the Visigoths in Spain. There 

 is thus an inevitable tendency for the children to speak their 

 mothers' tongue, and indeed the phrase " mother-tongue 

 is based on the fact, observed through long ages, that the 

 child learns its first words from its mother, and thus takes 

 after her in speech. This law, which still holds good in 

 modern days and in civilised communities, must have been 

 far stronger in earlier times in countries where the tie of 

 marriage hardly existed and the child belonged to its 

 mother's and not to its father's tribe, as is still the case 

 in many parts of the world. 



In view of these facts we cannot accept Sir John Rhys's • 

 hypothesis that when a few bodies of invaie.-s, whom he < 

 te-ms Celticans, passed into Ireland the indigenous sup- 

 posed non-.Aryan race within two centuries completely 

 abandoned its own language, taking over in its entirety 

 the Aryan tense system as well as the Aryan vocabulary 

 of its conquerors. 



Now let us turn to Greece, Italy, and Spain. It is 

 admitted that neither Arcadia nor .4ttica was ever con- 

 quered by Acheans or Dorians, yet in both these areas the 

 Greek language existed through all historical time, and 

 in .\ttica especially the .Aryan tense system is found in its 

 highest perfection. The dialect of Arcadia cannot have 

 been taken over from Acheans or Dorians, because it is 

 the same as that of the Cypriotes from Arcadia who settled 

 in Cyprus at least iioo B.C. It is also very close to the 

 dialect of Pelasgiotis in Thessaly, the home of the 

 aboriginal Pelasgian population, whilst it comes closest of 

 all Greek dialects to that of the ancient Epic. There can 

 therefore be no doubt that Arcadian is no mere bastard 

 lingo, half non-.Aryan, half .Aryan, but is the genuine speech 

 of the oldest and most unmixed population of Greece, who 

 were undoubtedly a melanochrous race, and who also most 

 certainly had occupied Greece from the Stone age. 



The Ligurians, who formed from the Stone age the 

 bottom stratum in all Upper and Central Italy, are now 

 admitted to have spoken an .Aryan language, and I have 

 recently given some reasons for believing that the Latin 

 language is simply the native tongue of the aboriginal 

 Ligurian population of Latium with some admixtures 

 derived from the Italic tribes of Siculi and Sabines. I 

 have also shown that the ancient Iberians, the ne.xt neigh- 

 bours of the Ligurians, used the same forms of place- 

 names as the latter, and that some of the words plainly 

 exhibit .Aryan terminations. Thus we may conclude that 

 with the exception of the Basques, who are probably a non- 

 .Aryan spurt from North .Africa, the melanochrous popula- 

 tions of Spain, Italy, the Balkan Peninsula, France, Britain, 

 Ireland, and Holland have from the first spoken none but 

 an .Aryan language. 



(c) Only one argument is now left to the defenders of 

 the non-.Aryan theory. When the study of sociology first 

 sprang up in the last century, it at once became a funda- 

 mental doctrine that the .Aryans had always been strictly 

 patriarchal, and that polyandry and descent through women 

 was unknown amongst them. Though this view ' has 

 received many rude shocks in later days. Prof. Zimmer 

 argues from it that the indigenous people of Britain ancf 

 Ireland were non-.Aryan. 



It is well known from the ancient writers that the Picts 

 were polyandrous, and that succession was consequently 

 through females. Again, it is certain, both from the 

 ancient Irish literature and also from statements of external 

 writers, that the Irish were polyandrous, and that they 

 also almost certainly traced descent through women. 

 .Accordingly Prof. Zimmer infers that the indigenous race 

 was non-.Aryan. But McLennan has long since pointed out 

 that descent through women was the ancient law at Athens, 

 and I have just shown that the .Athenians and .Arcadians, 

 the autochthonous, dark-complexioned people of Greece,. 



