BETHAM'S ETRURIA CELTICA.
Herodotus has this amusing story of a philological experiment made by the Egyptian king Psammetichus, who may, not inappropriately, be termed the James the First of his dynasty:—
"The Egyptians, before the reign of Psammetichus, considered themselves the oldest of mankind; but, after the reign of Psammetichus, enquiry having been made as to whether that were the case, thenceforth they considered the Phrygians to be their elders, themselves being next in seniority. For Psammetichus, finding no satisfactory solution to his enquiry on this subject, devised the following plan: He took two infant boys, born of humble parents, and committed them to the care of a shepherd, to be educated in this manner—that he should not permit any one to utter a sound in their hearing, but should keep them by themselves in a lonely house, admitting only she-goats at stated times to suckle them, and rendering them the other requisite services himself. So he did so; and Psammetichus directed him, as soon as the infants should cease their inarticulate cries, that he should carefully note what word they should first utter. And so it was, that, after the lapse of two years, both infants, with outstretched hands, running to meet their attendant the shepherd, as he entered one day, cried out, 'becco.' Of which the shepherd at first made no report, but hearing them reiterate the same, as often as he went to visit them, he informed his lord, and, by his commands, brought the boys and exhibited them; whereupon Psammetichus, as soon as he heard them, enquired 'what nation they were who called any thing by the name of becco?' to which enquiry he learned for answer, that the Phrygians call bread by that name. So the Egyptians being convinced by that argument, conceded the point, that the Phrygians had existed before them. 'All which,' says the father of history, 'I learned from the priests of Vulcan at Memphis.'"
This story, after exciting the smiles of the learned for about two thousand years, fell, in an evil hour for the peace of mind of modern philologers, into the hands of John Goropius Becan, a man of letters at Antwerp, who, recollecting that bec has a like signification in Dutch, (bec in that language meaning bread, and becker, as in our own, a baker,) immediately jumped to the conclusion, that Dutch must have been the language of the Phrygians, and that the Dutch were consequently the most ancient of mankind. This insane proposition he puts forward as the sole foundation of his two great folios, entitled, "Origines Antwerpianæ, sive Cimmeriorum Beceselana," printed at Antwerp in 1569, in which he derives all the nations of antiquity from the Dutch, and makes all the names of gods, demigods, heroes, and places of the Old World, to have their only proper and characteristic signification in that language. The grave precision with which he lays the first and only foundation-stone of this monstrous superstructure, is sufficiently entertaining. "The Phrygians spoke the Scythic (i. e. the High-Dutch) tongue; and the Egyptians allowed the Phrygian language to be the primitive one. For when their king had ascertained that bec was a word of the original language of mankind, and could not understand it, he was informed that, among the Phrygians, it signified bread; whereupon he adjudged that language to be of all others the first in which bec hath that meaning; which bec being, at this day, our word for bread, and becker ("baker") for bread-maker, it stands, consequently, confessed, on this most ancient testimony of Psammetichus, that our language is, of all others, the first and oldest." From so extravagant a commencement, nothing but the most fantastical results could be expected, and the reader will not be surprised to find Goropius making Adam and Eve a Dutchman and a Dutchwoman, as one of the very first corollaries from his fundamental proposition; the Patriarchs follow; then the Gentile gods, goddesses, and heroes; the Titans, the Cyclops, the pigmies, griffins, and
"Gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire,"—
nations, tribes, territories, seas, rivers, lakes, mountains, valleys, cities, and villages—all are drawn into this vast vortex of nonsense, set agoing originally by the single syllable bec, which, after all, if this story of the priests of Vulcan have any foundation in fact, was, most probably, nothing more than an imitation of the peculiar cry of the goats by which the infants had been suckled. Goropius's book was published at a time when the learned world were in no humour to tolerate such absurdities; and therefore, although exhibiting a considerable amount of learning in its own mad way, and a proportionate and characteristic degree of ingenuity, it called forth one of the severest reproofs that literary presumption has ever brought down, from the pen of Joseph Scaliger, whose condemnation was re-echoed by all the literary men of note of the day. It being part of Goropius's system that the ancient Gauls were Dutch, and the task of showing all the known words of the old Gaulish language to be significant in Dutch, being, consequently, incumbent on him as a first step to his bolder speculations on the unexplained names of men and places, he had, among others, given some ridiculous Dutch equivalents from the word ambactus, which, as we are informed by Festus, meant a slave or retainer in the old Gaulish tongue. Scaliger, shortly after, editing Festus, with annotations, and coming to the word in question, took that opportunity to administer to Goropius the following castigation—"I am unable to restrain my laughter," he says, "at what this singularly audacious and impudent person has written against Turnebus on this word. But, as all his books exhibit nothing else than a most impudent confidence in himself, so I reject his opinion on this matter as utterly impertinent and nonsensical. Never have I read greater absurdities; never have I seen, neither heard of greater or more audacious temerity, seeking, as he does, to derive all languages from his own barbarous dialect, so as to make the Hebrew itself inferior to the Dutch; nay, even reprehending Moses for taking the names of the patriarchs from his native Hebrew. Unlucky patriarchs and fathers, that were born Philistines of Palestine, and not Dutchmen of Antwerp!" Abrahan Mylius, another great scholar, though not of so extended a reputation as either of the Scaligers, soon after expressed much the same sentiments. "I am not," he says, "so full of wantonness as to be able to crack his insufferably absurd jokes with Becan, and give the palm of antiquity to the language of Flanders in preference to the Hebrew, making it the parent tongue not only of all other languages, but of the Hebrew itself." Schrevelius, the lexicographer, gave vent to his contempt in verse:—
"Quis tales probet oscitationes!
Quis has respectat meras chimeras!
Non Judæus Apella de proseucha,
Non qui de Solymis venit perustis,
Aut quisquam de grege Tabatariorum
Queis phœni cophinique cura major:
Cimmerii denique non puto probabunt
Et si prognatos Japhet putantur
Gomoroque parente procreati."
Our own Cambden, about the same time commencing his great work on British Antiquities, began by a protestation against being supposed "insaniam Becani insanire." Justus Lipsius alone, of all the learned men of the day, restrained the expression of positive indignation. "We often speak of Becan and his book about our language," he says, writing to Schottius, "and have frequent jokes on the subject. He, as you know, would have it not only to be an elegant and polished tongue, but the primitive one, and mother of all the rest. But we
'Stupuimus omnes tentamina tanta
Conatusque novos.'
And, indeed, many of us laugh heartily. What do I? I love the man himself, and I admire his quick, keen, and happy wit; happy, indeed, if he would turn it to some other subject-matter. But these speculations of his, what credit can we give to them, or what advantage expect from them? Whom shall I persuade that our language is thus supremely ancient—thus pregnant with mysterious meanings? That we here, next the Frozen Pole, are the earliest of mankind? that we alone preserve our language unadulterate and free from foreign admixture? Such assertions challenge laughter, not opposition." Goropius did not live to make any reply, dying shortly after in 1572; but his etymological mantle descended on a worthy successor, in the person of his countryman Adrien Von Scrieck, lord of Rodorn, who followed up the subject, on a slightly modified plan, in three-and-twenty books of Celtic and Belgic Origins, published at Ypres A.D. 1614. Scrieck adopted as the principle of his investigation this position from the Cratylus of Plato. "All things possess some quality which is the proper reason of their respective names; and those words which express things as they exist, are the true names, whereas those that give a contrary meaning are spurious." Nothing can be truer than this, provided only we knew the existing characteristics of each object, as the original namers had them in view when imposing their nomenclature; but when this clue is wanting, no labyrinth can lead an adventurer into more hopeless error. All articulate sounds necessarily resemble one another, and there is no name, either of a place or of a person, in any articulate language, that may not be constrained to bear some resemblance in sound to some words of any other given language. These, it is true, will seldom make sense, and never be truly appropriate; yet, with a little sleight-of-hand, dropping a letter here and adding one there, substituting a mute for a liquid or a liquid for a mute, and so forth, the ingenious etymologist will sometimes produce an equivalent, sounding not unlike the original, and making some sort of sense not altogether inapplicable to the subject-matter. As, for instance, if any one, impressed with the conviction that our own language is the mother tongue of mankind, were to derive Crotona from "Crow-town," he would produce an equivalent, sounding much the same, and having a meaning which might possibly have been quite applicable to Crotona, though 'tis pretty certain that it was not as "a city of kites and crows" that place originally obtained its designation. So Swift's "All-eggs-under-the-grate" sounds very nearly identical with the name of the Macedonian conqueror, though it by no means follows that the son of Philip either was partial to poached eggs, or named accordingly.
Absurd and ridiculous as these instances may appear, they hardly exceed the folly of some of Becan's and Scrieck's derivations from the Dutch. Thus Goropius makes Απολλως Af-hol-los, ("off-hole-loose,") i. e. "ex antro libera," or "I loose (the rays of light) off, or out of, the hole or cavern (of darkness!") and thus Scrieck derives Sequana (the river Seine) from see gang, i. e. "via maris," or the "gang-way to the sea!" and Cecrops from sea-crops, i. e. "a marinâ gulâ," because, we suppose, the Cecropidæ came to Greece with their crops full, (or empty, as the case might be,) after their sea voyage from Egypt.
The indignation and contempt of the learned world seem to have spent themselves on Goropius; and Scrieck's preposterous labour appears only to have excited laughter. The most illustrious writers in every department of erudition had just ceased to occupy the stage. Scrieck, coming out with his thousand folios of puerilities among a public familiar with the works of the two Scaligers, of Cassaubon, Lipsius, Cluver, Cambden, and the other great lights of learning that shed such a lustre on the latter end of the sixteenth century, was regarded much as Beau Coates may have been in latter days, presenting himself in the character of Romeo before audiences accustomed to the highest histrionic efforts of the Kembles. And as Coates, not satisfied with convulsing his audience by dying before them in the regular course of the play, would sometimes die over and over again for their entertainment; so Scrieck, not content with torturing all the names of men and places in Chaldea, Phœnicia, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Gaul, into Dutch equivalents, through the three-and-twenty books of his first impression, followed up his fantasy, in 1615, by an additional essay, in which whatever was extravagant before, became, if possible, still more transcendently nonsensical. Perhaps no part of the entire work is more characteristic of the vanity and blindness of the writer than his preface to this second part, where he gravely takes his guide, Goropius, to task for founding so large a work as the Becceselana on so small a foundation as the "bec" of Psammetichus, and regrets that his predecessor did not confine himself to etymons more consistent with the local and personal characteristics of his several subjects. For his own part the ground he goes upon is this, that the names of men and places among the Chaldeans, Egyptians, Greeks, and Latins, as also among the Scythians, Celts, Etruscans, and Belgæ, (which latter, he says, are all Celts,) are properly significant in that Scythic tongue which the Belgæ and Dutch to this day preserve; whence it follows, says he, "as an argument superior to all exception, that not only the Chaldaic, Egyptian, Greek, and Latin tongues (he does not mention the Hebrew, which he concedes to be the language of Paradise) are inferior and posterior to the tongue now used by the Belgæ and Dutch; but also that the same Belgæ and Dutchmen are extracted from a more ancient people, and a higher original, than the said Chaldeans, Egyptians, Greeks, or Romans."
And that this may appear by sufficient proofs, he proceeds to show that the chief names of men and places in each of these counties are rightly significant in Dutch, and not in their respective proper languages: as, for example—
"Adam—Scythicè Ad-ham, sive Haid-am, ens conjunctivum, 'a united entity.' The Chaldeans," says he, "interpreted Adam to mean 'red,' for what reason I cannot see. It doth not appear a name of sufficient dignity for the first and most perfect and absolute of men. 'Tis much more to the purpose that he should have got the name of an united entity, from the first institution of marriage by his Creator.
"Eva—i. e. heve, significat prægnans vel elevata, ab elevatione ventris; than which nothing could be said more in rem.
"Noe—N'hohe, that is, altus, celsus; as Noah was at the head of time after the deluge. The Chaldeans interpret it cessatio, quies; but Noah," says he, "had neither rest nor quiet during the deluge.
"Moses—mos-es, that is, the 'mud of the waters;' being, when an infant, exposed and raised out of the mud and slime of the river Nile. The Chaldeans interpret his name 'raised,' simply according to the mere circumstance of his being taken up; but the Celtic (i. e. the Dutch) signification denotes the whole fact.
"David—D'af-heid, that is to say, 'lowness,' 'humility.' For David was not only of a low stature, but, above all, low and humble in his mind, as appears from 1 Kings," &c. &c.
After Teutonising the Hebrew in this manner, he next proceeds to the Egyptian.
"Aegyptos—haeg-up-t'hos, that is 'sylvæ supra altitudines,' 'the woody heights above.' (How this is exactly applicable he does not inform us.)
"Nilus—N'hil-ho, that is, the 'high descent,' to wit, of waters; for the Nile descends from the Mountains of the Moon, which are very high.
"Sebenuticum—(a town of the Delta,) Seben-vuyticum, that is, 'the seven-fold outcome;' for the Nile is seven-fold, and hath seven mouths or outlets.
"Pharos—Phær-ho, signifying adnavigatio alti, or the navigation towards the high places; for Pharos is an island with a lofty tower," &c. &c.
Then he takes his course into Greece and Latium, but it would be idle to follow him through a hundredth part of these vagaries. In not a single instance does he pay the least attention to what the Greeks and Romans themselves thought or taught on these subjects, except, indeed, in the solitary case of the Peloponnesus, which he admits may possibly have had its name from Pelops, though he thinks it more likely that it expresses the more appropriate Scythic phrase Pfel-op-on-es—"Campus superior ad aquas," or the fell or plain up, on, or above the water.
Coming in the course of his peregrinations to Etruria, and being equally successful in making all the ancient names of men and places there significant in Dutch, he boldly attempts the interpretation of the Eugubian tablets. These singular remains of the extinct language of Etruria, had already exercised the skill of some of the best scholars of the 16th century, but none of them had succeeded in bending this new bow of Ulysses. To the insane all things are easy. Scrieck made no more of the task than did Ulysses—
"When the wary hero wise,
His hand now familiar with the bow,
Poising it and examining—at once;
As when in harp and song adept, a bard
Unlabouring strains the chord to a new lyre,
The twisted entrails of a sheep below
With fingers nice inserting, and above—
With such facility Ulysses bent
His own huge bow, and with his right hand play'd
The nerve, which in its quick vibration sung
Clear as a swallow's voice."
With equal confidence Scrieck addresses himself to decipher the tablets of Gubbio. "That the Dutch was the language of Etruria," he says, "appears not only from these unquestionably Celtic (i. e. Dutch) names of the most ancient places in Italy, but also by that extraordinary monument of antiquity, the Etruscan inscription, which, Gruter writes me, was found some years back at Eugubio (Gubbio) in Etruria, on eight brazen tablets: the first written in inverted Greek letters, and the rest in Latin characters." These, upon examination, he pronounces to be clearly Dutch, and as a specimen adds some sentences of the sixth table, beginning—Serverent: pemimums: serverent: deitu: etais euo: primater, &c.; and containing, according to his account, near the end the following passage: Serba martia epustote serfia serfir martia tensa serfir sarfer martia fututo. Of which he gives the following version, premising that the 's' in his copy has an additional stroke, which makes it sound st. Sterve mar tie evverstote sterfte sterver maer tier duersaft sterte sterver mar tier vut-vute; i. e. "Let him only die the death who is an extern; let them only die the death who are externs; let them only die the death who are outer externs;" being, as he says, a deprecation merely of the evils of mortality, and a prayer for their infliction on strangers, as Horace says—
Hinc bellum lacrymosum, hinc miseram famem
Pestemque a populo et principe Cæsare, in
Persas atque Britannos,
Vestrâ motus aget prece."
Having rendered this and the incantation for the cure of sprains, given in Cato, "De Re Rustica," into the old Dutch, of which we have had so many specimens, he closes this summary of his labours with the declaration, that whoever, after these proofs, will assert that the Etruscan language was other than the Dutch, cannot be considered otherwise than as non compos mentis.
We had little expectation, when laughing at these vagaries of Scrieck and Becan, many years ago, that it would yet be our lot to see the same follies revived in our own time, and among ourselves. But follies are like fashions, which, having once prevailed in the metropolis, usually run the round of the provinces. And so this fantastic trick of interpreting the names of antiquity by modern equivalents, spreading from the schools of Antwerp and Ypres, still shows itself occasionally in the outskirts of the republic of letters, and has here lately had a new Avatar, fully as absurd as any of its prior exhibitions, among those Jupiters Stators of every exploded folly of the Continent—the English writers on the antiquities of Ireland.
This new Irish Becceselana is entitled "Etruria-Celtica. Etruscan Literature and Antiquities investigated, or the language of that ancient and illustrious people compared and identified with the Iberno-Celtic, and both shown to be Phœnician, by Sir William Betham, Ulster King-at-Arms, Vice-President of the Royal Dublin Society, F.S.A., M.R.I.A., &c. &c."[6] This title exhibits a design in no respect different from that of Goropius and Scrieck, except in the substitution of the Iberno-Celtic, by the Irish writer, for the Belgico-Celtic equivalents of the Dutch. If there were sufficient reason to suppose that the vice-president of the Royal Dublin Society was acquainted with the Greek and Latin writers who concur in establishing the non-identity of these nations, we would say that he exhibits as culpable a contempt for their authority as his Batavian precursors; but Sir William Betham appears scarcely to have read on the subject at all; and what was wilful presumption on their part, may be the innocence of mere want of knowledge on his; for both Scrieck and Becan were perfectly aware that, in identifying so many nations of antiquity with their own, they were flying in the face of all authority; but Betham Hibernicizes all the nations from Taprobana to Thule, apparently unconscious of any recorded reason against their universal identity.
That the Etruscans spoke Irish, he concludes just as Goropius concluded that the Phrygians spoke Dutch, from the coincidence of a single word having, as he alleges, the same sound and meaning in each; and as a single passage from Herodotus was the sole foundation for the vast inverted pyramid of nonsense piled up by Goropius on that individual point, (and kept from toppling over only by sheer force of impudence,) so the single well-known passage from Suetonius, ascertaining the Etruscan Aesar to be a designation of the Deity, (Aesar being also, as it is said, Irish for the same,) gives the only ground on which Betham rests his extravagant assertion, that the Eugubian inscriptions contain an account of the discovery of Ireland by the Etruscan navigators, and with a pretended version of which, through the medium of Irish, as he alleges, he has filled the whole first volume of his book.
"In reading in Suetonius the life of Augustus," he says, "I found that Aesar in the Etruscan tongue signified God. The import in Irish being the same, it struck me forcibly that this might not be accidental, but that the Etruscan language might be essentially Celtic, and therefore capable of interpretation by the Irish. On examination, the conjecture proved well-founded. The results of the investigation, consequent on the discovery of this clue, will be found in the following pages."
It is true the Etruscan Aesar is said to have a like meaning with an alleged Irish word, coined and spelled by Vallancy aosfhear; but it has also an identical meaning with the Indian eswara, and the Egyptian osiris, and the Islandic aesæ, which makes æsar in the plural; and it would be just as reasonable to infer, that therefore the Etruscans spoke the Hindostanee, or the Coptic, or the Islandic language, as that they spoke Irish.
All the nations of Christendom give God the name Christ; but he would be justly deemed insane who would argue, that therefore English is the proper medium of interpretation for a Russian ukase.
Common sense, without any further learning, might have told Sir William Betham, that till he stood on some surer ground than the coincidence of a single word, even supposing that word a genuine one, it would be the excess of folly to venture on such an application of a modern language; and further learning (if he had possessed it) would have confirmed the suggestion of common sense. With a moderate amount of learning, he would have known that, besides the names of known deities—Kupra, Nyrtia, Mantus, Aukelos, Camillus, corresponding to the heathen Juno, Fortuna, Pluto, Aurora, Mercury—there are also several other Etruscan words of which we know the meanings, such as faland, the heavens; andras, the north wind; lucumo, a king; drouna, a kingdom or principality; damnos, a horse; capra, a goat; agalletor, a youth; verse, fire; ites, the ides of a month; hister, a stage-player; subulo, a trumpeter; italos, a bull; arimoi, monkeys, antar, an eagle; arakos, a lark; gnis, a crane; capys, a falcon; gapos, a chariot; burros, a bowl; atarin, a wine-cruet; nanos, a wanderer; mantissa, an increase or addition; turseis, a space enclosed with walls; and several others, not one of which bears the remotest resemblance to any Irish or Celtic word of equivalent meaning.
Further learning, also, would have taught him the hopelessness of reconciling the Etruscan with any of the languages of Europe known as spoken languages immediately before the Christian era—Dionysius of Halicarnassus having expressly declared, that neither in language nor in customs were the Etruscans of his time similar to any other known nation; and Dionysius was well acquainted with both Celts and Phœnicians.
Besides, the Phœnician equivalents for most of the Etruscan words in the list we have just enumerated, are known, and ought to have been known to any writer undertaking an investigation of either language; and if known to Sir William Betham, ought at once to have deterred him from this preposterous attempt. Thus the Phœnician equivalent of aesar is aloni or alonim; of kypra, astarte; of nyrtia, god; of mantus, much; of faland, samen; of andras, carbon; of lucumo malaho; of damnos, rackabe, &c. &c., in none of which, except samen, does there appear the least similarity, either with the Etruscan or the Irish words of like signification. So also in respect of a number of Gaulish words, the meanings of which have come down to us, and of which no one pretending competency to such enquiries ought to be ignorant, but of the existence of which this vice-president of a leading literary society of Ireland seems utterly unconscious. But fools will rush in where angels fear to tread, and Ignoramus walks with confidence where Eruditus fears to take a step. Reader, do not think that Christopher is too severe! For what but condemnation and contempt can any rational mind conceive, for a writer so incapable of dealing with even the rudiments of his subject, and yet so presumptuous in the temerity of his ignorance, as to declare that "till now not a scintilla of light has appeared on the subject of Etruscan antiquities?" We can pardon learned trifling, but when a man wholly unlearned, on a subject of the greatest interest to the learned world, presumes to dogmatize in this manner, we strip him in an instant, and have no mercy in exposing to both learned and simple the nakedness of his pretensions.
Still facts are facts, and if the fact be, that the tablets of Gubbio are written in the Irish language, and that Sir William Betham, though as ignorant of his subject as was the boy who invented the safety-valve of the steam-engine, has happened in any way, by skill or by chance, learnedly or unadvisedly, modestly or arrogantly, on the truth, let him, together with the condemnation, have the credit he deserves, if not as a Columbus of a new world of letters, at least as a Madoc or a Thorfinn.
The first line of the first table, reading from right to left, he reads thus: we say he, for the very form of some of the letters are still doubtful:—Pune: Carne: Speturie: Atuerie: Abiecati: Naroclum. Is this Irish? If so, we would expect some six Irish words to be adduced, of corresponding sound, and having a grammatical dependence and sensible meaning among themselves. Instead of this, Betham professes to find the equivalent expressions in twenty-four Irish, or quasi-Irish words, which have neither grammatical relation to one another, nor any coherent meaning in their united senses—viz. Pune car na is be tur i e at i i er i e a bi e ca ta na ra ac lu am; i. e. "Phœnician to Carne (the turn) it is night voyage in it likewise in knowledge great in it the being away how it is the going with water on the ocean." And this he tells us, being interpreted, signifies, "O Phœnicians, this is a statement of the night voyage to Carne, (the turn,[7]) and of the manner of going such great seawise over by the waters of the ocean!"
The only glimmering of any thing like meaning in this string of unconnected verbiage, appears in the detached phrases "night voyage," "the being away," and "going with water on the ocean." But the syllable be, which he renders "night," (on what authority Night and Chaos only know,) is not found in the original; and "being away," depends for its meaning wholly on the certainty that e means "away" in that collocation of words, and not "it," as in the phrases immediately preceding; and there is no suggestion of any reason why it should not here have the same signification as above, or why it should not mean "of" or "from," in both of which senses the writer employs it in the subsequent sentences. "Going with water on the ocean," owes its only pretension to meaning, however absurd, to "going" and "ocean;" but there is no am for "ocean" in the original, and the "ra" which he interprets "going" and "moving," is wholly a coinage of his own brain.
The same may be observed throughout the endless rigmarole of "moon," "stars," "steering," "ocean," "night," "day," "knowledge," "science," and "O Phœnician!" that succeed one another in monotonous repetition for the next 200 pages. Wherever there appears the least symptom of connected meaning or applicable language, (admitting the preposterous supposition that these tables are the records of early voyagers to Ireland,) we invariably find that either the original is departed from, or that the alleged equivalents belong to no known language of articulately-speaking men.
Taking the same liberty of arbitrary division, any one of moderate ingenuity might turn these inscriptions into a jargon just as readable in any language of the world. Divide any sentence of any articulate language into syllables, and apply these alleged Irish words used by Betham as their equivalents, and you may make it an equally authentic record of a voyage to Ireland or to the moon, or a recipe for the toothache, or any thing else you please, with the greatest facility.
Curious reader, tell us, pray, which is the more readable jargon—this,
"God to knowledge agreeable it is quick and water lonely star indeed the to it in day the month this in knowledge with is from the sea very solitary being water with the water the voyage always the coast steering being throughout moon to knowledge in water God indeed the water to danger this the in knowledge with with altogether to night the man from current the being water the to cause knowledge steering water by Ocean the north."
Or this?
"Was which security day and night inform Phœnician from night means in defence by skill throughout the means being also water means voyage from the means as indeed the voyage in it far away people water of the sea in gentle inward it is by wisdom day and night in it is gentle indeed the sea by science which by night in the will be to will be means of the star it far away Phœnician far away steering night and day and then to whence is in the ocean night sailing happy."
We believe most of our readers will incline to say that the one is about as insane gibberish as the other; or if they discover a distinction, will give the palm of a less degree of incoherency to the first. The first is our own; the second is Betham's—being his literal version of the first three sentences of the second table, and in no material respect different from his version of any other three sentences of any of the rest of the series.[8] The other is our own literal version, on the same principle, of a sentence of his own, marked in italics in the following extracts, in which he defends his arbitrary division of the Etruscan text into monosyllables, though the punctuation of the original plainly divides it into many-syllabled words.
In defence of this unjustifiable corruption of the original, he alleges these excuses—
"In the chapter on language, p. 52, &c., are a few remarks upon the division of the words in these inscriptions, in answer to the criticism of the learned Committee of the Royal Irish Academy, who charged me with 'having made alterations' in the text unwarrantably, 'especially in the division of the words.' The charge of having made any alterations is altogether groundless, I might add unjust, uncourteous, and uncalled for. I have not altered a single letter. I have added a letter here and there in the Irish, when, by the genius and character of that language, it was justifiable, as (when) the addition of a word was required to make sense, and when in the original the sound did not require it to be expressed; but this is fully answered and explained in the chapter alluded to. The 'division of the words' requires a few brief observations here.
"It will be observed that in the first five tables there are divisions marked with colons, thus (:); in the sixth and seventh tables, and in the Perugian inscription, the divisions are marked with a single period (.)
"In the first few lines of the first table it appears, that, although these divisions generally include perfect syllables and words, yet the same words are differently divided. In the fifth line, the second division contains JUBEBATREBUMPERACNE, and in the fourth division PERAKNE stands alone. The first division of this fifth line contains SAKRE:—in the next line it is worded thus, UNUERIETUSAKRE; this same variation of division pervades all the tables, and indeed almost every line of each table; the same may be observed on the Perugian inscription. The hypercriticism of the learned committee was therefore altogether erroneous, and their observations not borne out.[9] These marks are evidently not intended as divisions of words, but of sentences, and they are not sufficiently precise even in that respect to constitute an accurate guide. The syllabic division, however, is governed by rule, is precise, uniform, fixed, and consistent, and may therefore be acted on with some degree of certainty. Instances occur where three or four consonants follow each other, and vowels are altogether omitted; but a little exertion of sagacity, after some practice and study, enables us to judge of this and supply the omissions."—(Vol. i. p. 369.)
And again, in the passage referred to at p. 53,
"Whether I was arbitrary and unauthorized in the division of the words, will now appear by comparison, as the columns stand in juxtaposition, and all are able to judge. The division is merely made into syllables, which, so far from being an unnatural or arbitrary division, is the only division which could be reasonably and fairly adopted."
That is to say Hibernicè, or rather Bethamicè—The ti fis e on is mear i lu om a do an do is i la bil se i i ac is o bar bro om be en go (⁂ we only "add a letter here and there in the Irish, when, by the genius and character of that language, it is justifiable, as when the addition of a vowel is required to make sense, and when in the original the sound does not require it to be explained,") an en na tur al ur ar bi tre re ti fis i en is the an lu ti fis si an i i ac co al do be re as a ra be lu an do fa i ar lu a taob tuait.
But are these singular-looking syllables Irish? They certainly are neither sense nor grammar; but we take them all as they appear, with their alleged meanings in English, from that copious store of ungrammatical nonsense called Irish, collected in those pretended versions of the tables of Gubbio; and the reader has already seen what a characteristic jargon they make when rendered by their English equivalents.
His fatuity and presumption appear almost incredible. Knowing but a single Etruscan word, and that a word of two syllables, and finding it, as he alleges, identical with an Irish word also of two syllables, he concludes that the Etruscan and Irish languages are the same, and both monosyllabic. Had he known all that men of ordinary learning know upon the subject, he would have known that of the remaining two or three-and-thirty ascertained Etruscan words, some are of two—some of three—some of four syllables—but not one of them all a monosyllable. Yet thus ignorant even of the commonest rudiments of learning on his subject, he takes it upon him to talk of men of real learning in the following strain—
"That the language of Etruria has hitherto defied the laborious investigations of the learned of Italy, is now on all hands admitted. Passavi, Gori, and Landsi, have done something to obscure, but little if any thing towards its elucidation. Nor have the German investigators been more successful. Dr Lepsius has lately given an account of the Eugubian tables, and Dr Grotefend a work on the rudiments of the Umbrian tongue, and still the subject is as much at sea as ever. These profound scholars have made no real impression—no light has been elicited—the meaning of a single word has not been obtained with any certainty. The solemn, learned, trifling, and absurd speculations of Passavi, Gori, and Landsi, and their followers, are now treated with deserved contempt. This is an age of critical enquiry; commonplace twaddling, inane generalities, and magniloquent essays and lectures, even if delivered by professors who enjoy the happiness of presiding over Roman colleges, only excite derision. Learned savans must now put forth reasonable and intelligible postulates, and opinions must be supported by facts, or they will only expose themselves to deserved contempt."—(Vol. i. p. 22.)
Swift himself could not hit the style of the literary quack more perfectly. "I have considered the gross abuse of astrology in this kingdom," says Mr Bickerstaff, "and upon debating the matter with myself, I could not possibly lay the fault upon the art, but upon those gross impostors who have set up to be the artists. I know several learned men have contended that the whole is a cheat; and whoever hath not bent his studies that way, may be excused for thinking so, when he sees in how wretched a manner that noble art is treated by a few mean illiterate traders between us and the stars; who import a yearly stock of nonsense, lies, folly, and impertinence, which they offer to the world as genuine from the planets, though they descend from no greater height than their own brains. I intend in a short time to publish a large and rational defence of this art; and therefore shall say no more in its justification at present." But here, indeed, the comparison falls; for while Bickerstaff postpones his proofs for another occasion, Betham proudly displays his "reasonable and intelligible postulate," in his one fact, that the dissyllable Aesar is God alike in Etruscan and in Irish. Whence he concludes that Etruscan and Irish are, therefore, the same language, and that both consist of words of one syllable each. "The discovery," he says, (Vol. ii. page 286,) "if 'wonderful' was also accidental, at least the first clue to it was the solitary fact mentioned in Vol. i. p. 33, of the passage in Suetonius' life of Augustus, where Aesar is said to mean, in the Etruscan language, God. So small a spark lighted up the large fire." We are irresistibly reminded of Goropius and his "consequenter fatendum est antiquissimâ hoc Psammetichi sententiâ."
The translation of the Eugubian tablets, however, is but a part of the huge mass of absurdity piled up on these two little syllables, Ae-sar. There is a second volume, in which all the topographical extravagances of Scrieck are played over again, præconis ad fastidium, with this difference, however, that where Scrieck, in his interpretations, gave genuine Dutch, Betham, in his, gives spurious Irish; for he owns himself, that "if a sentence be formed of these obsolete monosyllabic words, the translation in English making good sense, the original, if read to the best Irish scholar of the day, will appear to him an unknown tongue." He begins first with Sanconiathan, which he makes the name of the book, not of the author, sean cead na than; i. e. "the old beginning of time," when the gods spoke in monosyllabic Irish, and called chaos cead-os, "the first intelligence." And here it must be admitted that the Dutchmen are outdone: for neither Becan nor Scrieck went above Adam. But Betham is as much at home on Olympus as either of the Dutchmen was in Paradise; and with the aid of his monosyllabic glossary, transmutes the celestials into Teagues and Oonahs as fast as his sybilline syllables can be put together. Apollo is ab ol lo, "the mighty lord of the waters;" (this is hardly as good as the off-hole-loose of Goropius:) Minerva is Ma na er ar fad, (a terribly long recipe for a name this,) or "the good, the illustrious guiding wisdom." Hermes is tur-mees, "the messenger of the wind." Hercules is er cu lais, "the illustrious hero of light;" but he seems to be sadly at sea for a derivation for Neptune, whom he is obliged to turn into a Tyrrhenian catamaran or Irish currow, Naebh tonn "the ship of the sea." Jupiter (not being an Etruscan, he is not here allowed the pas) iudh bit er, "day being great," (which is a very dark saying.) Bacchus, bac aois, "the sustainer of time." Mercury, meer cu re, "the swift champion of the moon"—really this is mere lunacy. Any one might, with equal plausibility, derive the whole Pantheon from the English, as Apollo, "aye follow," because day always follows night, and Apollo always followed pretty girls, Daphne in particular; Mercury, "mirk hurry," because Mercury hurried the ghosts down through the mirk or murky darkness to the Styx. Hercules, "he reckless," because Hercules was a great daredevil. Venus, "vain is," because a pretty woman is too often vain of her good looks. Juno, "do now," because people were in the habit of making their requests to her, or, perhaps, because Jupiter used to say so when he wished her to give him a kiss. Jupiter, "stupider," because it was natural that Juno should say he was the stupider of the two when they happened to differ; or, pace viri tanti, "you pitier," when poor mortals raised their sorrowful supplications to him.
Scrieck's foundation for all his extravagant topographical derivations was the passage from Plato. Doctor Johnson seems to have been the Plato of these new etymological rambles; but we apprehend that neither the Greek nor the British philosopher would be much edified by the philological excursions of the Irish disciple. Nothing can be more perfect in its way than the dogmatic audacity with which he assigns his derivations; it is in the true vein of Bickerstaff, and a model to quacks of all classes.
"Before we commence our examination into the geographical divisions of Italy, it is necessary to say something of that portion of the world with which the Phœnicians became for the first time acquainted after their settlements in Syria, since called Europe, by an accident as trivial and unlikely to happen as that by which the new world in modern times was denominated America, that is, by a blunder of the Greeks. The fable of the rape of Europa, &c., was a mere national allegory, of which the following is the substance. When the Phœnician Homeritæ had discovered the Mediterranean, &c.—they sent out vessels to explore it, e, 'it,' u, 'from,' ro, 'to go,' ba, 'was,' tur, 'voyage,' ros, 'to the promontory;' I. E. it was to go from a voyage to (Italy) the promontory. This was, as usual of the Greeks taking sound for sense, made into a lady and a bull—tur ros must be the Greek ταῦρος, and the Lady Europa was to ride the bull to Crete, which was one of the first discoveries and settlements. Of the children or results, Minos has been already explained as mian, 'minis,' nos, 'knowledge,' or 'the art of mining.' Rhadamanthus means nothing more than that the voyage to Crete was the first great result of discoveries on this sea: ra, 'going,' ad, 'illustrious,' am, 'great sea,' en, 'the,' tus, 'first.' So simple is the explanation!—(Vol. ii. p. 244.)
Scrieck had some remains of the modesty of learning, which prevent his becoming a complete master of this style. The Peloponnesus might perhaps possibly, he owned, have been derived from Pelops; though 'twas more likely it should come from Pfel-op-on, &c. &c. That admission was ill-judged: he ought to have denied that Pelops ever existed, and laughed at the blundering Greeks. But the Irishman is a deacon of his craft, and settles the point like an adept. "Peloponnesus, according to the Greek, the island of Pelops. But the name was of much greater antiquity than Greek civilization, and was, like all others, given by the Phœnicians. Pelops was an imaginary character. The meaning of the word is, the promontory of the courteous people; bel, 'mouth,' aiobh, 'courteous,' a, 'the', neas, 'promontory,' aos, 'community, race of people.'"—(Vol. ii. p. 254.)
When Partridge, the almanack-maker, had overlived the fatal day assigned for his decease by Bickerstaff, he intimated as much to his friends and the public, assuring them that he was not only then alive, but had also been alive on the very 29th March, when the wise astrologer had foretold he should die.
"Now," says Bickerstaff in reply, "I will plainly prove him to be dead out of his own almanack for this year, and from the very passage which he produceth to make us think him alive. He says, he is not only now alive, but was alive upon that very 29th of March which I foretold he should die on; by this he declares his opinion that a man may be alive now who was not alive a twelvemonth ago. And, indeed, there lies the sophistry of his argument. He dares not assert that he was alive ever since that 29th of March, but that he is now alive, and was so on that day. I grant the latter, for he did not die till night, as appears by the printed account of his death in a letter to a lord, and whether he since revived I leave the world to judge. This, indeed, is perfect cavilling; and I am ashamed to dwell any longer upon it."
So if the shade of Pelops will receive our counsel, we advise him to abstain from vouching any of the family of Tantalus to testify to the reality of his existence; for he has to deal with a Bickerstaff, by whom it has been demonstrated that Tantalus is nothing but tain tal ais, "water receding backwards," or an incarnation of those fabulous times when water was supposed to run uphill, whence it appears that the whole race of Atreus is a mere series of non-existences. It is true we take this latter derivation from an extract from another of this judicious discriminator's labours, in the Transactions of his Academy, where, among other etymological curiosities, we have that very Irish youth Narcissus, a beautiful youth, who, seeing his own image reflected in a stream, became enamoured of it, thinking it the nymph of the water. Naobh ceas as—"the sight of a nymph in the stream." Pythia, "the priestess of Apollo at Delphos. She always delivered her oracles in hexameter verses, and with musical intonation—pitead, 'music,' from whence the name."[10]
Sanconiathon, no longer the "old beginning of time," appears here as san, "holy," con, "understanding, sense, or wise men," niod, "real," tain, "of the country"—"the sacred writer or wise recorder of the events of his country." Pygmalion, big, "little," mallein, "mule," the little mule, or person of a low stature and obstinate disposition. This is hardly so good as Swift's pigmy lion. "Pasiphæ, ba sabas, 'the propensity, fancy, or disposition of a cow;' and, proh pudor, Venus, 'herself,' bhean, 'the woman,' aois, 'of the community'—pronounced vanus, 'the —— or woman of the town!'"
But to come back to the geographical division of the Levant, to which e u ro ba tur ros, which the foolish Greeks construed Europa and the bull, were only preparatory, we have another luculent example of the Bickerstaff style in Gallia Togata.
"It is said the country was called Togata by the Romans, because they wore the Roman toga or gown. This seems doubtful, for when a country became a Roman province, the same reason for the name should apply universally. We must therefore seek a more satisfactory derivation for that name, to be found in the circumstances of the country. Gallia Togata consists of the plain country intersected by the Po and its numerous tributaries, and surrounded on the north and west by the high ranges of the Alps, on the south by the Apennines, and on the east by the Adriatic. It is, perhaps, the best-watered and most fertile country in Europe, enjoying a delightful climate. Its name, Togata, says all this, togh, it is the chosen land, or, to use an English idiom, choice land, the most desirable and delightful country; togh a ta, literally the chosen spot or place. Sound, not sense, suggested the Roman derivation."
Of course Gallia Braccata and Gallia Comata had just as little to say to "long hair," or a "pair of breeches," as Gallia Togata to a Roman gown, and the application of gens togata to the inhabitants of Italy, as contradistinguished from the transalpine and other provinces, was altogether a blunder of the ancients.
"We have before us again Creta, the largest of the Greek islands. Its name is derived by some from the Curetes, who are said to have been its first inhabitants; by others from the nymph Crete, daughter of Hesperus; and by others from Creos, a son of Jupiter, and the nymph Idœa. These are private conceits. It derives its name from its shape and external appearance from the sea; and had such an island been discovered in modern times by English navigators, it would have been called the ridge island, the precise meaning of its name in Celtic creit a, "the ridge," putting the article last, in conformity to idiom."
Cythera, "one of the Ionian Islands. Like all the other names for which the Greeks had no known origin, they derived it from an individual called Cytherus. It is subject to heavy showers, from which the name cith, showers, er, great, a, the,—that is, the island of heavy showers."
Zacynthus.—"A small island to the south of Cephalonia, (ce fal ia; i. e. the fruitful plains country.) The Greeks say the island was named from a companion of Hercules, who, dying from the bite of a serpent, was buried there. It was so called, because a strong current is there first felt by the mariner coming from the east, za cing thus, current, strong, first."
We really find some difficulty in believing that it is not Swift's Essay on the Antiquity of the English Language that we have before us.
"My present attempt is to assert the antiquity of our English tongue, which, as I shall undertake to prove by invincible arguments, hath varied very little for these two thousand six hundred and thirty-four years past. And my proof shall be drawn from etymology, wherein I shall use my matter much better than Skinner, Verstegan, Cambden, and many other superficial pretenders have done; for I will put no force upon the words, nor desire any more favour than to allow for the usual accidents of composition, or the avoiding a cacophonia.
"I will begin with the Grecians, among whom the most ancient are the Greek leaders on both sides at the siege of Troy. For it is plain, from Homer, that the Trojans spoke Greek, as well as the Grecians. Of these latter Achilles was the most valiant. This hero was of a restless, unquiet nature, and therefore, as Guy of Warwick was called a Kill-care, and another terrible man a Kill-Devil, so this general was called a Kill-Ease, or destroyer of ease, and at length by corruption Achilles.
"Hector, on the other side, was the bravest among the Trojans. He had destroyed so many of the Greeks by hacking and tearing them, that his soldiers, when they saw him fighting, would cry out, 'Now the enemy will be hackt—now he will be tore.' At last, by putting both words together, the appellation was given to their leader under the name of Hack-tore, and, for the more commodious sounding, Hector.
"The next I shall mention is Andromache, the famous wife of Hector. Her father was a Scottish gentleman of a noble family still subsisting in that ancient kingdom; but being a foreigner in Troy, to which city he led some of his countrymen in the defence of Priam, as Dictys Cretensis learnedly observes, Hector fell in love with his daughter, and the father's name was Andrew Mackay. The young lady was called by the same name, only a little softened to the Greek accent."
And now, and as no Irish antiquary can be well supposed to write a complete book without giving his own theory of the round towers of that country, we come to the chapter on these singular structures, in which, of course, all former enquirers are proved to have been egregiously wrong, and a new theory established on incontrovertible evidence; viz. that the round towers were monuments erected over different incarnations of the god Buddho. As usual, there is the alleged mistake of sound for sense to account for the reason why their common appellation of clogteach, or "bell house," should not truly express their use.
"I shall remark upon a vulgar error which has had great currency among Irish antiquarians, who have asserted that they were called clogteach, 'steeples, belfries.' Bells are of comparatively recent introduction into Ireland, and clock, from which the word has evidently been derived, still more modern. The blunder has arisen from ignorance of the language. I have a memorandum in an Irish MS., that they were called by the people leactaidh, that is, monuments of the dead, the sound of which has been mistaken by those who but imperfectly knew the language. Many writers have been mistaken by this."
The memorandum in the Irish MS. looks very like Bickerstaff's Letter to a Lord. We could wager our crutch against the baton of the Ulster king, that the memorandum is in his own or his scribe's handwriting, and the language in which it is imagined, a variety of that new dialect in which Mr Silk Buckingham declares that his Irish friends converse with the Phœnician aborigines of Mount Atlas. But the proof of the pudding is the eating of it, and it seems that under one of the towers they have found Buddho himself, body and bones, which puts the matter beyond controversy; for if Buddho be buried under the tower, the tower itself must needs be Buddho's monument. At p. 210, (Vol. ii.,) we have a representation of the Indian divinity (how comes it that Buddho is not made an Etruscan?) lying buried in the basement of the tower at a place called Ardmore. There seems to be no question that a skeleton was got in the bottom of this tower, and another in another; and the discoverers of the fact deserve credit for their addition to the slight stock of knowledge that the Irish antiquarians seem to possess of those which are perhaps the most singular monuments in their country; but that the bones are those of a Buddho! really this exceeds our largest estimate of human fatuity.
But for the communications announcing these discoveries, the two volumes would be altogether destitute of a single fact, or even useful hint, bearing on the diversified subjects which their prodigiously ignorant and audacious author has presumed to handle. How far the fact of these skeletons being found in such a situation, may affect the rational investigation of the question, we do not pretend to judge. We would merely observe, that human interments are found under most ecclesiastical foundations, and that their occurrence under the "turres ecclesiasticæ" of Cambrensis, seems at present no more wonderful than their occurrence in the vaults of an ordinary church.
But we really were surprised, after our long familiarity with "the holy illustrious guiding one of the sea"—"the mighty lord of the waters"—"the swift champion of the moon," and the other moonstruck pseudo deities of the Eugubian tables, to find the chief place and honour in the island of their own discovery and adoption taken from them, and bestowed on the Indian Buddho. The "swift champion of the moon" seems to have been sensible of the affront, and to have made his indignation perceptible in the suggestion of an argument that can hardly have descended from any but the lunar sphere; viz. that because the Buddhists of the east raise monumental dagobas over the relics of their deity, and the Irish round towers, as is alleged, (by a nameless interpolation in a nameless Irish MS.,) have been called by a name arguing monumental purposes, that therefore the Irish towers are dagobas, and any bones that may be found in or about their foundations are relics of Buddho. The dagobas of Ceylon and India are buildings of a totally different character from these towers; they do strongly resemble the pyramidal structures of Yucatan, but bear not the remotest likeness to any round tower either in Ireland or elsewhere. Such facts might furnish grounds for arguing an identity between Buddho and Quaccalcoatle, (and such an identity appears by no means improbable;) but thence to attempt the deduction of any argument applicable to the round towers in Ireland or Great Britain, only shows the illogical constitution of the arguer's mind.
We have given the book and the subject more space than we intended, and certainly much more than the former, by itself, is worth; but the subject is one that, whether magnified into an undue importance by having been repeatedly treated by men of note and learning or not, does, in the present state of European literature, stand high among the loftiest marks aimed at by human intellect; and any one singling himself from the crowd of lookers-on, and addressing himself to hit it, makes himself, for the moment, the observed of the whole learned world, and by his success or his failure acquires honour, or brings down reproach upon his country. We cannot permit British literature to be scandalized by the failure of one from our ranks who is manifestly inadequate to the task even of handling his piece, much less of bringing down the popinjay, without condemning the rashness of the attempt, and exonerating ourselves from any charge of participating in it.