The blunders mentioned are intelligible enough as in a version from the French; but in the description of the Indian pearl-fishery we have a startling one not so easy to account for. The French says, “the divers gather the sea-oysters (hostrige de Mer), and in these the pearls are found.” This appears in the Tuscan in the extraordinary form that the divers catch those fishes called Herrings (Aringhe), and in those Herrings are found the Pearls!
[5] As examples of these Italianisms: “Et ont del olio de la lanpe dou sepolchro de Crist”; “L’Angel ven en vision pour mesajes de Deu à un Veschevo qe mout estoient home de sante vite”; “E certes il estoit bien beizongno”; “ne trop caut ne trop fredo”; “la crense” (credenza); “remort” for noise (rumore); “inverno”; “jorno”; “dementiqué” (dimenticato); “enferme” for sickly; “leign” (legno); “devisce” (dovizia); “ammalaide” (ammalato), etc. etc.
Professor Bianconi points out that there are also traces of Venetian dialect, as Pare for père; Mojer for wife; Zabater, cobbler; cazaor, huntsman, etc.
I have not been able to learn to what extent books in this kind of mixed language are extant. I have observed one, a romance in verse called Macaire (Altfranzösische Gedichte aus Venez. Handschriften, von Adolf Mussafia, Wien, 1864), the language of which is not unlike this jargon of Rustician’s, e.g.:—
“‘Dama,’ fait-il, ‘molto me poso merviler
De ves enfant quant le fi batecer
De un signo qe le vi sor la spal’a droiturer
Qe non ait nul se no filz d’inperer.’”—(p. 41)
[6] As examples of such Orientalisms: Bonus, “ebony,” and calamanz, “pencases,” seem to represent the Persian abnús and ḳalamdàn; the dead are mourned by les mères et les Araines, the Harems; in speaking of the land of the Ismaelites or Assassins, called Mulhete, i.e. the Arabic Muláhidah, “Heretics,” he explains this term as meaning “des Aram” (Ḥarám, “the reprobate”). Speaking of the Viceroys of Chinese Provinces, we are told that they rendered their accounts yearly to the Safators of the Great Kaan. This is certainly an Oriental word. Sir H. Rawlinson has suggested that it stands for dafátir (“registers or public books”), pl. of daftar. This seems probable, and in that case the true reading may have been dafators.
[7] Luces du Gast, one of the first of these, introduces himself thus:— “Je Luces, Chevaliers et Sires du Chastel du Gast, voisins prochain de Salebieres, comme chevaliers amoureus enprens à translater du Latin en François une partie de cette estoire, non mie pour ce que je sache gramment de François, ainz apartient plus ma langue et ma parleure à la manière de l’Engleterre que à celle de France, comme cel qui fu en Engleterre nez, mais tele est ma volentez et mon proposement, que je en langue françoise le translaterai.” (Hist. Litt. de La France, xv. 494.)