FROM THE MS. OF PROFESSOR WITTEMBACH
I
"Théodore," said Professor Wittembach, "please give me that manuscript-book, bound in parchment, which is laid on the second shelf above my writing-desk—no, not that one, but the small octavo volume. I copied all the notes of my journal of 1866 in it—at least those that relate to Count Szémioth."
The Professor put on his glasses, and, amid profound silence, read the following:—
"LOKIS,"
with this Lithuanian proverb as a motto:
"Miszka su Lokiu,
Abu du tokiu."[1]
When the first translation of the Holy Scriptures into the Lithuanian language appeared in London, I published in the Scientific and Literary Gazette of Kœnigsberg, an article wherein, while rendering full justice to the efforts of the learned interpreter and to the pious motives of the Bible Society, I pointed out several slight errors, and showed, moreover, that this version could only be useful to one portion of the Lithuanian people.
Indeed, the dialect from which they translated is hardly intelligible to the inhabitants of the districts where the Jomaïtic tongue, commonly called Jmoude, is spoken, namely, in the Palatinate of Samogitia. This language is, perhaps, nearer akin to the Sanskrit than to High Lithuanian. In spite of the furious criticisms which this observation drew down upon me from a certain well-known professor of the Dorpat University, it so far enlightened the members of the Committee of the Bible Society that they lost no time in making me a flattering offer to direct and supervise an edition of the Gospel of St. Matthew into Samogitian. I was too much occupied at the time with my researches in Trans-Uralian dialects to undertake a more extended work comprising all four of the Gospels. Deferring my marriage with Mlle. Gertrude Weber, I went to Kowno (Kaunas) for the purpose of collecting all the linguistic records, whether printed or in MSS., of Jmoude, that I could lay hands on. I did not overlook, of course, old ballads (daïnos), tales, or legends (pasakos) which would furnish me with material for a Jomaïtic vocabulary, a work which must necessarily precede that of translation.
I had been given a letter of introduction to the young Count Michel Szémioth, whose father, I was told, had come into the possession of the famous Catechismus Samogiticus of Father Lawiçki. It was so rare that its very existence had been disputed, particularly by the Dorpat professor to whom allusion has been already made. In his library I should find, according to the information given me, an old collection of daïnos, besides ballads in old Prussian. Having written to Count Szémioth to lay the object of my visit before him, I received a most courteous invitation to spend as much time at his Castle of Médintiltas as my researches might need. He ended his letter by very gracefully saying that he prided himself upon speaking Jmoude almost as well as his peasants, and would be only too pleased to help me in what he termed so important and interesting an undertaking. Besides being one of the wealthiest landowners in Lithuania, he was of the same evangelical faith of which I had the honour to be a minister. I had been warned that the Count was not without a certain peculiarity of character, but he was very hospitable, especially towards all who had intellectual tastes. So I set out on my journey to Médintiltas.