“A pretty philologist,” said the Hungarian, “who makes the gypsies speak Roth-Welsch, the dialect of thieves; a pretty historian, who couples together Thor and Tzernebock.”
“Where does he do that?” said I.
“In his conceited romance of ‘Ivanhoe,’ he couples Thor and Tzernebock together, and calls them gods of the heathen Saxons.”
“Well,” said I, “Thur or Thor was certainly a god of the heathen Saxons.”
“True,” said the Hungarian; “but why couple him with Tzernebock? Tzernebock was a word which your Valter had picked up somewhere without knowing the meaning. Tzernebock was no god of the Saxons, but one of the gods of the Sclaves, on the southern side of the Baltic. The Sclaves had two grand gods to whom they sacrificed, Tzernebock and Bielebock; that is, the black and white gods, who represented the powers of dark and light. They were overturned by Waldemar, the Dane, the great enemy of the Sclaves; the account of whose wars you will find in one fine old book, written by Saxo Gramaticus, which I read in the library of the college of Debreczen. The Sclaves, at one time, were masters of all the southern shore of the Baltic, where their descendants are still to be found, though they have lost their language, and call themselves Germans; but the word Zernevitz near Dantzic, still attests that the Sclavic language was once common in those parts. Zernevitz means the thing of blackness, as Tzernebock means the god of blackness. Prussia itself merely means, in Sclavish, Lower Russia. There is scarcely a race or language in the world more extended than the Sclavic. On the other side of the Dunau you will find the Sclaves and their language. Czernavoda is Sclavic, and means black water; in Turkish, kara su; even as Tzernebock means black god; and Belgrade, or Belograd, means the white town; even as Bielebock, or Bielebog, means the white god. Oh! he is one great ignorant, that Valter. He is going, they say, to write one history about Napoleon. I do hope that in his history he will couple his Thor and Tzernebock together. By my God! it would be good diversion that.”
“Walter Scott appears to be no particular favourite of yours,” said I.
“He is not,” said the Hungarian; “I hate him for his slavish principles. He wishes to see absolute power restored in this country, and Popery also—and I hate him because—what do you think? In one of his novels, published a few months ago, he has the insolence to insult Hungary in the presence of one of her sons. He makes his great braggart, Coeur de Lion, fling a Magyar over his head. Ha! it was well for Richard that he never felt the gripe of a Hungarian. I wish the braggart could have felt the gripe of me, who am ‘a’ magyarok közt legkissebb,’ the least among the Magyars. I do hate that Scott, and all his vile gang of Lowlanders and Highlanders. The black corps, the fekete regiment of Matyjas Hunyadi, was worth all the Scots, high or low, that ever pretended to be soldiers; and would have sent them all headlong into the Black Sea, had they dared to confront it on its shores; but why be angry with an ignorant, who couples together Thor and Tzernebock? Ha! Ha!”
“You have read his novels?” said I.
“Yes, I read them now and then. I do not speak much English, but I can read it well, and I have read some of his romances, and mean to read his ‘Napoleon,’ in the hope of finding Thor and Tzernebock coupled together in it, as in his high-flying ‘Ivanhoe.’”
“Come,” said the jockey, “no more Dutch, whether high or low. I am tired of it; unless we can have some English, I am off to bed.”