PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 841 



Ilolstein iu 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 

 still flourishes. 



We may therefore conclude that the adoption by the conquered of the 

 language of the conqueror, even when it does take place, which is but rarel}', 

 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 conqueror 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 contrary. 

 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 

 adv.intages. Here, if anywhere, we ought to find a gradual adoption by 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 Austro- 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 readily adopts the language of another, 

 even though it be in close ties of friendship ; whilst there is still less tendency 

 when national hostility intervenes. Secondly, the adoption of the language of the 

 conqueror by the conquered, except under the most favourable circumstances, is 

 not common, and only takes 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 invaders, whom he terms Celticaus, passed into Ireland the 

 indigenous supposed 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 Attica was ever conquered by Acheans or Dorians, yet in both these 

 areas the Greek language existed through all historical time, and in Attica 

 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 

 1100 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 np 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 Ivigurians, who formed from the Stone age the bottom stratum in all 



