Opuscula: Essays chiefly Philological and Ethnographical

by R. G. Latham

Let it pass for historical, notwithstanding the leadership of the five brothers (one the eponymus Krobatos) and the two sisters.

Let it do this, and then let us ask how it is to be interpreted. Widely or strictly? We see what stands against it viz: the existing conditions of three mountainous regions exhibiting the signs of being the occupancies of an aboriginal population as much as any countries on the face of the earth.

What then is the strict interpretation? Even this—that Heraclius introduced certain Croatians from the north into the occupancies of the dispossessed Avars apparently as military colonies. Does this mean that they were the first of their lineage? By no means. The late emperor of Russian planted Slavonic colonies of Servians in Slavonic Russia. Metal upon metal is false heraldry; but it does not follow that Slave upon Slave is bad ethnology.

With such a full realization of the insufficiency of the evidence which makes Bohemia, Carinthia, Servia &c. other than Slavonic ab initio, we may proceed to the ethnology of the parts to the west, and southwest—the Tyrol, Northern Italy, Switzerland, Bavaria, and Wurtemberg. In respect to these, we may either distribute them among the populations of the frontier, or imagine for them some fresh division of the population of Europe, once existent, but now extinct. We shall not, however, choose this latter alternative unless we forget the wholesome rule which forbids us to multiply causes unnecessarily.

Let us say, then, that the southern frontier of the division represented by the Slavonians of Carniola was originally prolonged until it touched that of the northernmost Italians. In like manner, let the Styrian and Bohemian Slaves extend till they meet the Kelts of Gaul. With this general expression I take leave of this part of the subject—a subject worked out in detail elsewhere (Edition of Prichard's Eastern origin of the Celtic Nation, and The Germania of Tacitus with Ethnological Notes,—Native Races of the Russian Empire &c.).

The northern and eastern frontiers of the Slavonians involve those of (1) Ugrians, (2) the Lithuanians.

In respect to the former, I think a case can be made out for continuing the earliest occupancy of the populations represented by the Liefs of Courland, and the Rahwas of Estonia to the Oder at least; perhaps further. This means along the coast. Their extent inland is a more complex question. The so called Fin hypothesis in its full form is regarded, by the present writer, as untenable. But between this and a vast extension of the Fin area beyond its present bounds there is a great difference. It is one thing to connect the Basks of Spain with the Khonds of India; another to bring the Estonians as far west as the Oder, or even as the Elbe. It is one thing to make an allied population occupant of Sweden, Spain, and Ireland; another to refer the oldest population of western Russia to the stock to which the eastern undeniably belongs. This latter is a mere question of more or less. The other is a difference, not of kind, but of degree. With this distinction we may start from the most southern portion of the present Ugrian area; which is that of the Morduins in the Government of Penza. Or we may start from the most western which is that of the Liefs of Courland. What are the traces of Fin occupancy between these and the Vistula and Danube—the Vistula westward, the Danube on the South. How distinct are they? And of what kind? We cannot expect them to be either obvious or numerous. Say that they are the vestiges of a state of things that has passed away a thousand years, and we only come to the time of Nestor. Say that they are doubly so old, and we have only reached the days of Herodotus; in whose time there had been a sufficient amount of encroachment and displacement to fill the southern Governments of Russia with Scythians of Asiatic origin. The Britons were the occupants of Kent at the beginning of our æra. How faint are the traces of them. We must regulate, then, our expectations according to the conditions of the question. We must expect to find things just a little more Ugrian than aught else.

From that part of Russia which could, even a thousand years ago, exhibit an indigenous population we must subtract all those districts which were occupied by the Scythians. We do not know how much comes under this category. We only know that the Agathyrsi were in Hungary, and that they were, probably, intruders. We must substract the Governments of Kherson, Ekaterinoslav, and Taurida at the very least—much of each if not all. That this is not too much is evident from the expressed opinions of competent investigators. Francis Newman carries the Scythia of Herodotus as far as Volhynia, and, in Volhynia, there were Cumanian Turks as late as the 11th century. Say, however that the aborigines were not Fins. At any rate they were not the ancestors of the present Russians—and it is the original area of these that we are now considering. In the North there were Fins when Novorogod, and in the East Fins when Moscow, was founded. In Koursk, writes Haxthausen, there is a notable difference in the physiognomy of the inhabitants; the features being Fin rather than Slavonic.

I now notice the name of Roxolani. Prichard and, doubtless, others besides see in this a Fin gloss, the termination -lani being the termination -lainen in Suomelainen, Hamelainen and several other Fin words, i. e. a gentile termination. It does not follow from this that the people themselves were Fins. It only follows that they were in a Fin neigbourhood. Some one who spoke a language in which the form in -lain- was used to denote the name of a people was on their frontier, and this frontier must have been South of that of the Roxolani themselves—else how did it come to the ears of the Greeks and Romans? If this were not the case, then was the name native, and the Roxolani were Ugrian. In either case we have a Fin gloss, and a Fin locality suggested by it. Now the country of the Roxolani either reached, or approached, the Danube.