Lekh is the name best suited for ethnological purposes, because it connects the modern kingdom of Poland with the country of the ancient and powerful Lygii, a name “widely spread over numerous states. It will be sufficient to name the most powerful, the Arii, the Manimi, the Helvecones, the Elysii, the Naharvali.”[14]
The religion of the first, and the warlike customs of the last of these nations, are noticed somewhat in detail; for the Naharvali celebrated certain rites within a holy grove, and with a priest in a woman’s dress. One of their deities was named Alcis; two others were the analogues of Castor and Pollux.
The fierce and powerful Arii stained their bodies, and with black shields chose the darkest nights for their terrible attacks.
That Tshekh and Lekh were the respective leaders of the Bohemians and Poles, is, with each nation, a native tradition. It is also under the name of Lekh that the latter are noticed by the oldest Slavonic historian—the monk Nestor.
The Naharvali were probably Lithuanians of East Prussia, rather than true Poles.
The Arii, according to the Lithuanic hypothesis of the Sanskrit language, may have been something much more important, viz., the Median Arii of the Asiatic invasion; in which case they were themselves either Lithuanian rather than Polish, or else (as is likely) the migration was Slavono-Lithuanic, instead of exclusively Lithuanic.
Upon the Lekh origin of the Helvecones, Manimi, and Elysii, there are no refinements.
Of the Polish area the eastern and northeastern parts seem to be the most recent, since, within the historical period, it has encroached upon that of the Lithuanians of Grodno and the Baltic provinces, and upon that of the Russniaks of Gallicia. In character, the language approaches the Tshekh of Bohemia, and the Sorabian of Lusatia and Saxony in the south and west. It was extended in the direction of the Elbe, as will be seen in the chapter on Prussia.
Unless it can be shown that the text of Tacitus is conclusive as to the Lygii having been Germans rather than what the name, place, and the belief of the Poles themselves suggest, the Poles of south-western Poland (at least) form the purest population which has been met with since we left the Basques; so that as far as it has been mixed at all, it has been through elements superadded to the original Lekh stock rather than through those of anything anterior to it. The Mongol invasions touched it; but that is all. The Roman and German conquests never reached it. Upon Russia, until the last century, it encroached. Hence, the elements of admixture that remain are Jewish, German, and others even less important still.
The language is a separate substantive tongue; the most cultivated of all the Slavonic forms of speech. From the Lithuanian it is broadly separated; less so from the Muscovite and Malorussian; but less still from the Bohemian and Sorabian.