Ziller and celer I have already alluded to,[14] though of course it may be said that the Tirolean river had its name from an already romanised Etruscan word, and does not necessarily involve direct contact with the Etruscan vocabulary.
- Grau-wutzl is a name in the Zillerthal for the Devil.
- Disel, for disease of any kind.
- Gigl, a sheep.
- Kiess, a heifer.
- Triel, a lip.
- Bueg, a leg.
- knospen stands in South-Tirol for wooden shoes, and
- fokazie for cakes used at Eastertide. (Focaccia is used for ‘cake’ in many parts of Italy, and ‘dar pan per focaccia’ is equivalent to ‘tit for tat’ all over the Peninsula.)
It remains only to excuse myself for the spelling of the word Tirol. I have no wish to incur the charge of ‘pedantry’ which has heretofore been laid on me for so writing it. It seems to me that, in the absence of any glaring mis-derivation, it is most natural to adopt a country’s own nomenclature; and in Tirol, or by Tirolean writers, I have never seen the name spelt with a y. I have not been able to get nearer its derivation than that the Castle above Meran, which gave it to the whole principality, was called by the Romans, when they rebuilt it, Teriolis. Why they called it so, or what it was called before, I have not been able to learn. The English use of the definite article in naming Tirol is more difficult to account for than the adoption of the y, in which we seem to have been misled by the Germans. We do not say ‘the France’ or ‘the Italy;’ even to accommodate ourselves to the genius of the languages of those countries, therefore, that we should have gone out of our way to say ‘the Tyrol’ when the genius of that country’s language does not require us so to call it, can have arisen only from a piece of carelessness which there is no need to repeat.
[1] This is what the introduction of manufactories is doing in Italy at this moment. The director of a large establishment in Tuscany, which devours, to its own share, the growth of a whole hill-side every year, smiled at my simplicity when I expressed regret at hearing that no provision was made for replacing the timber as it is consumed.
[2] Except the Legends of the Marmolata, which I have given in ‘Household Stories from the Land of Hofer; or, Popular Myths of Tirol,’ I hardly remember to have met any concerning its prominent heights.
[3] I published much of the matter of the following pages in the first instance in the Monthly Packet, and I have to thank the Editor for my present use of them.
[4] See Steub ‘Über die Urbewohner Rätiens und ihren Zusammenhang mit den Etruskern. Münich, 1843,’ quoted in Dennis’ Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, I. Preface, p. xlv.
[5] See it in use below, p. 28, and comp. Etruscan Res. p. 302, note.
[6] Somewhat like pleurer. A good many words are like French, as gutschle, a settle (couche); schesa, a gig; and gespusa, mentioned above, is like épouse; and au, for water, is common over N. Tirol, as well as Vorarlberg, e.g. infra, pp. 24, 111. &c.