516 Rev. Mr Williams on one Source of the 



co very, which will enable us to read them with perfect facility. 

 They are evidently hymns, composed by priests, similar in cha- 

 racter to the Curetes, Idaei Dactyli, Telchines, Orphic initia- 

 tors, and other such colleges, whose mission it was to communi- 

 cate the blessings of corn and wine, under religious and myste- 

 rious sanctions, to those nations, which had not previously been 

 made acquainted, with those main supports of civilized life. 



Among these names the Pelasgi occupy a conspicuous station, 

 not, however, as teachers of the art of agriculture and vine-dress- 

 ing, but as hewers of stone and builders of fortresses and cities. 

 It would be most difficult to prove that they ever were a distinct 

 nation, but it is clear that they belonged to that race, call them 

 Trojans, Pelasgians, Thracians, Phrygians, or any other equiva- 

 lent name, who sunk under the superior energies of the Achaean 

 and Hellenic races. Pelasgus, the patron saint or mythological 

 representation of the Pelasgi, is described by Pausanias, 1 as the 

 person " who first invented huts to defend mankind from the 

 cold and rain." Even Fynes Clinton, with all his judgment and 

 sagacity, cannot press this Pelasgus into the historical curricu- 

 lum, without multiplying him into five distinct personages, a clear 

 proof that there is not the slightest rational ground for clothing 

 him at all with a real existence. That the Pelasgi were every- 

 where to be found, is most true, in Asia, in Crete, in the other 

 islands, in Thrace, Thessaly, Epirus, Peloponnesus, and Italy, but it 

 is impossible to prove that they were a race distinct in blood from 

 the other older inhabitants of those countries. The word, twist- 

 ed as it has been by various attempts at etymology, seems a very 

 simple compound of the two words «xa, the old Macedonian 2 



1 Lib. 8. cap. 1. 



TLiXasyog 6s fiaorAiuffuc. rovlo fjbsv 'TroiriSae&ai nako^ac, iffiwrixiv, wg ^ 'gryouvrsg xa< uiadui rove 

 avQpoiTovg. 



2 See the Macedonian Glossary at the end of Steph. Thes. 



