These proceedings of mine did not fail to cause a great sensation: the priests and their partisans were teeming with malice and fury, which, for some time, however, they thought proper to exhibit only in words; it being their opinion that I was favoured by the ambassador and by the British government; but there was no attempt, however atrocious, that might not be expected from their malignity; and were it right and seemly for me, the most insignificant of worms, to make such a comparison, I might say, like Paul at Ephesus, I was fighting with wild beasts.
On the last day of the year 1837, my servant Antonio thus addressed me: “Mon maître, it is necessary that I leave you for a time. Ever since we have returned from our journeys, I have become unsettled and dissatisfied with the house, the furniture, and with Doña Marequita. I have therefore engaged myself as cook in the house of the Count of ---, where I am to receive four dollars per month less than what your worship gives me. I am fond of change, though it be for the worse. Adieu, mon maître; may you be as well served as you deserve. Should you chance, however, to have any pressing need de mes soins, send for me without hesitation, and I will at once give my new master warning, if I am still with him, and come to you.”
Thus I was deprived for a time of the services of Antonio. I continued for a few days without a domestic, at the end of which time I hired a certain Cantabrian or Basque, a native of the village of Hernani, in Guipuzcoa, who was strongly recommended to me.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
Euscarra—Basque not Irish—Sanscrit and Tartar Dialects—A Vowel Language—Popular Poetry—The Basques—Their Persons—Basque Women.
I now entered upon the year 1838, perhaps the most eventful of all those which I passed in Spain. The despacho still continued open, with a somewhat increasing sale. Having at this time little of particular moment with which to occupy myself, I committed to the press two works, which for some time past had been in the course of preparation. These were the Gospel of St. Luke in the Spanish gypsy and the Euscarra languages. [111a]
With respect to the gypsy Gospel, I have little to say, having already spoken of it in a former work; [111b] it was translated by myself, together with the greater part of the New Testament, during my long intercourse with the Spanish gypsies. Concerning the Luke in Euscarra, however, it will be as well to be more particular, and to avail myself of the present opportunity to say a few words concerning the language in which it was written, and the people for whom it was intended.
The Euscarra, then, is the proper term for a certain speech or language, supposed to have been at one time prevalent throughout Spain, but which is at present confined to certain districts, both on the French and Spanish side of the Pyrenees, which are laved by the waters of the Cantabrian Gulf, or Bay of Biscay. This language is commonly known as the Basque, or Biscayan, which words are mere modifications of the word Euscarra, the consonant B having been prefixed for the sake of euphony. Much that is vague, erroneous, and hypothetical has been said and written concerning this tongue. The Basques assert that it was not only the original language of Spain, but also of the world, and that from it all other languages are derived; but the Basques are a very ignorant people, and know nothing of the philosophy of language. Very little importance, therefore, need be attached to any opinion of theirs on such a subject. A few amongst them, however, who affect some degree of learning, contend that it is neither more nor less than a dialect of the Phœnician, and that the Basques are the descendants of a Phœnician colony, established at the foot of the Pyrenees at a very remote period. Of this theory, or rather conjecture, as it is unsubstantiated by the slightest proof, it is needless to take further notice than to observe that, provided the Phœnician language, as many of the truly learned have supposed, and almost proved, was a dialect of the Hebrew, or closely allied to it, it were as unreasonable to suppose that the Basque is derived from it as that the Kamschatkan and Cherokee are dialects of the Greek and Latin.
There is, however, another opinion with respect to the Basque which deserves more especial notice, from the circumstance of its being extensively entertained amongst the literati of various countries of Europe, more especially England. I allude to the Celtic origin of this tongue, and its close connexion with the most cultivated of all the Celtic dialects—the Irish. People who pretend to be well conversant with the subject, have even gone so far as to assert, that so little difference exists between the Basque and Irish tongues, that individuals of the two nations, when they meet together, find no difficulty in understanding each other, with no other means of communication than their respective languages; in a word, that there is scarcely a greater difference between the two than between the French and the Spanish Basque. Such similarity, however, though so strongly insisted upon, by no means exists in fact; and perhaps in the whole of Europe it would be difficult to discover two languages which exhibit fewer points of mutual resemblance than the Basque and Irish.
The Irish, like most other European languages, is a dialect of the Sanscrit, a remote one, as may well be supposed; the corner of the western world in which it is still preserved being, of all countries in Europe, the most distant from the proper home of the parent tongue. It is still, however, a dialect of that venerable and most original speech, not so closely resembling it, it is true, as the English, Danish, and those which belong to what is called the Gothic family, and far less than those of the Sclavonian; for the nearer we approach to the East, in equal degree the assimilation of languages to this parent stock becomes more clear and distinct; but still a dialect, agreeing with the Sanscrit in structure, in the arrangement of words, and in many instances in the words themselves, which, however modified, may still be recognized as Sanscrit. But what is the Basque, and to what family does it properly pertain?