Hitherto the opportunities of intermixture have been but slight. With that part, however, of Albania which coincides with the ancient Epirus, rather than with Southern Illyria the case is different.
In the time of Pyrrhus it was Hellenized, and at the very earliest dawn of history its population was modified still more considerably. By whom? By the inhabitants of the opposite coast of Italy, whoever they were.
This is as much as is necessary to say about the Skipetar of Albania at present. They are the descendants of the Southern Illyrians and the ancient Epirots—Chaonians, Thesprotians, Molossians, &c. They are pure in blood, as compared with nine-tenths of the rest of Europe; but still more or less mixed, the chief foreign elements being ancient Italian, Greek, and Roman.
CHAPTER II.
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL.—THE EUSKALDUNAC, OR BASQUES.—THE IBERIAN STOCK.—THE TURDETANIAN CIVILIZATION.—PHŒNICIAN—ROMAN—VANDAL—GOTHIC ELEMENTS.—KELTIBERIANS.—THE ORIGINAL KELTÆ IBERIANS.—THE WORD KELTIC OF IBERIAN ORIGIN.—THE ARAB CONQUEST.—EXPULSION OF THE ARABS.—THE JEWS OF SPAIN.—GIPSIES.—PHYSICAL AND MORAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MODERN SPANIARDS.—PORTUGAL.
THE western extremity of the Pyrenees, where France and Spain join, gives us a locality rendered famous by the historical events of San Sebastian, and the legends of Fuenterabia, with the provinces of Bearn and Gascony on the French, and Navarre and Biscay on the Spanish, side of the mountains. Here it is where, although the towns, like Bayonne, Pampeluna, and Bilbao, are French or Spanish, the country people are Basques or Biscayans—Basques or Biscayans not only in the provinces of Biscay, but in Alava, Upper Navarre, and the French districts of Labourd and Soule. Their name is Spanish (the word having originated in that of the ancient Vascones), and it is not the one by which they designate themselves; though, possibly, it is indirectly connected with it. The native name is derived from the root Eusk-; which becomes Eusk-ara when the language, Eusk-kerria when the country, and Eusk-aldunac when the people are spoken of; so that the Basque language of the Biscayans of Biscay is, in the vernacular tongue, the Euskara of the Euskaldunac of Euskerria.
It is not for nothing that this difference of form has been indicated. In the classical writers we find more than one of the old Spanish populations mentioned under different derivatives from the same root, and sometimes a doubt is expressed by the writer in whose pages it occurs, as to whether there were two separate populations, or only one denoted by two synonymous names. Thus, side by side with the Bast-uli, we find the Bast-itani, and, side by side with the Turd-uli, the Turd-etani. Now respecting these last, Strabo expressly says that whether they were different populations under the same name, or the same under different ones is uncertain.
That the Euskara is no new tongue may be inferred from the fact of its falling into dialects; which Humboldt limits to three, whilst others extend them to five or six.
a. The Biscayan proper is spoken in the country of the ancient Autrigones and Caristii, and it has been proposed to call it the Autrigonian. It has, less correctly, been called Cantabrian, and this is the name which the national taste best likes; for a descent from the indomitable Cantabrian that so long and so successfully spurned the yoke of Rome, and who transmitted the same spirit and the same independence to the Asturian, is creditable enough to be claimed. Nor is the claim unfounded; since, in all probability, the ancient Cantabria included some of the ancestors of the Euskaldunac.
b. The Guipuscoan is the western Biscayan.