ARAM, EUGENE (1704-1759), English scholar, but more famous as the murderer celebrated by Hood in his ballad, the Dream of Eugene Aram, and by Bulwer Lytton in his romance of Eugene Aram, was born of humble parents at Ramsgill, Yorkshire, in 1704. He received little education at school, but manifested an intense desire for learning. While still young, he married and settled as a schoolmaster at Netherdale, and during the years he spent there, he taught himself both Latin and Greek. In 1734 he removed to Knaresborough, where he remained as schoolmaster till 1745. In that year a man named Daniel Clark, an intimate friend of Aram, after obtaining a considerable quantity of goods from some of the tradesmen in the town, suddenly disappeared. Suspicions of being concerned in this swindling transaction fell upon Aram. His garden was searched, and some of the goods found there. As, however, there was not evidence sufficient to convict him of any crime, he was discharged, and soon after set out for London, leaving his wife behind. For several years he travelled through parts of England, acting as usher in a number of schools, and settled finally at Lynn, in Norfolk. During his travels he had amassed considerable materials for a work he had projected on etymology, to be entitled a Comparative Lexicon of the English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Celtic Languages. He was undoubtedly an original philologist, who realized, what was then not yet admitted by scholars, the affinity of the Celtic language to the other languages of Europe, and could dispute the then accepted belief that Latin was derived from Greek. Aram’s writings show that he had grasped the right idea on the subject of the Indo-European character of the Celtic language, which was not established till J.C. Prichard published his book, Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations, in 1831. But he was not destined to live in history as the pioneer of a new philology. In February 1758 a skeleton was dug up at Knaresborough, and some suspicion arose that it might be Clark’s. Aram’s wife had more than once hinted that her husband and a man named Houseman knew the secret of Clark’s disappearance. Houseman was at once arrested and confronted with the bones that had been found. He affirmed his innocence, and, taking up one of the bones, said, “This is no more Dan Clark’s bone than it is mine.” His manner in saying this roused suspicion that he knew more of Clark’s disappearance than he was willing to admit. He was again examined, and confessed that he had been present at the murder of Clark by Aram and another man, Terry, of whom nothing further is heard. He also gave information as to the place where the body had been buried in St Robert’s Cave, a well-known spot near Knaresborough. A skeleton was dug up here, and Aram was immediately arrested, and sent to York for trial. Houseman was admitted as evidence against him. Aram conducted his own defence, and did not attempt to overthrow Houseman’s evidence, although there were some discrepancies in that; but made a skilful attack on the fallibility of circumstantial evidence in general, and particularly of evidence drawn from the discovery of bones. He brought forward several instances where bones had been found in caves, and tried to show that the bones found in St Robert’s Cave were probably those of some hermit who had taken up his abode there. He was found guilty, and condemned to be executed on the 6th of August 1759, three days after his trial. While in his cell he confessed his guilt, and threw some light on the motives for his crime, by asserting that he had discovered a criminal intimacy between Clark and his own wife. On the night before his execution he made an unsuccessful attempt at suicide by opening the veins in his arm.
ARAMAIC LANGUAGES, a class of languages so called from Aram, a geographical term, which in old Semitic usage designates nearly the same districts as the Greek word Syria. Aram, however, does not include Palestine, while it comprehends Mesopotamia (Heb. Aram of two rivers), a region which the Greeks frequently distinguish from Syria proper. Thus the Aramaic languages may be geographically defined as the Semitic dialects originally current in Mesopotamia and the regions extending south-west from the Euphrates to Palestine. (See [Semitic Languages]; [Syriac]; [Targum].)
ARANDA, PEDRO PABLO ABARCA DE BOLEA, Count of (1719-1798), Spanish minister and general, was born at the castle of Siétamo, a lordship of his family near Huesca in Aragon, on the 1st of August 1719. The house of Abarca was very ancient, a fact of which Don Pedro, who never forgot that he was a “rico hombre” (noble) of Aragon, was deeply conscious. He was educated partly at Bologna and partly at the military school of Parma. In 1740 he entered the army as captain in the regiment “Castilla,” of which his father was proprietary colonel. On the death of his father he became colonel, and served in the Italian campaigns of the War of the Austrian Succession. In 1749 he married Doña Ana, daughter of the 9th duke of Hijar, by whom he had one son, who died young, and a daughter. During the following years he travelled and visited the camp of Frederick the Great, whose system of drill he admired and afterwards introduced into the Spanish army. After a short period of diplomatic service in Portugal, where his exacting temper made it impossible for him to agree with the premier, Pombal, he returned to Madrid, was made a knight of the Golden Fleece, and director-general of artillery—a post which he threw up, together with his rank of lieutenant-general, because he was not allowed to punish certain fraudulent contractors. The king, Ferdinand VI., exiled him to his estates, but Charles III. on his accession took him into favour. He was again employed in diplomacy, and then appointed to command an army against Portugal in 1763. In 1764 he was made governor of Valencia. When in 1766 the king was driven from his capital in a riot, he summoned Aranda to Madrid and made him president of the council, and captain-general of New Castile. Until 1773 Aranda was the most important minister in Spain. He restored order and aided the king most materially in his work of administrative reform. But his great achievements, which gave him a high reputation throughout Europe with the philosophical and anti-clerical parties, were his expulsion of the Jesuits, whom the king considered responsible for the riot of 1766, and the active part he took in the suppression of the order. Aranda had come much under foreign influence by his education and his travels, and had acquired the reputation of being a confirmed sceptic. By Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists he was erected into a hero from whom great things were expected. His ability, his remarkable capacity for work, and his popularity made him indispensable to the king. But he was a trying servant, for his temper was captious and his tongue sarcastic, while his aristocratic arrogance led him to display an offensive contempt for the golillas (the stiff collars), as he called the lawyers and public servants whom the king preferred to choose as ministers, and he permitted himself an amazing freedom of language with his sovereign. At last Charles III. sent him as ambassador to Paris in a disguised disgrace. Aranda held this position till 1787, but in Paris he was chiefly known for his oddities of manner and for perpetual wrangling with the French on small points of etiquette. He resigned his post for private reasons. In the reign of Charles IV., with whom he had been on familiar terms during the life of the old king, he was for a very short time prime minister in 1792. In reality he was merely used as a screen by the queen Maria Louisa and her favourite Godoy. His open sympathy with the French Revolution brought him into collision with the violent reaction produced in Spain by the excesses of the Jacobins, while his temper, which had become perfectly uncontrollable with age, made him insufferable to the king. After his removal from office he was imprisoned for a short time at Granada, and was threatened with a trial by the Inquisition. The proceedings did not go beyond the preliminary stage, and Aranda died at Epila on the 9th of January 1798.
See Don Jacobo de la Pezuela in the Revista de España, vol. xxv. (1872); Don Antonio Ma. Fabié, in the Diccionario general de politica y administration of Don E. Suarez Inclan (Madrid, 1868), vol. i.; M. Morel Fatio, Études sur l’Espagne (2nd series, Paris, 1890).
(D. H.)
ARAN ISLANDS, or South Aran, three islands lying across Galway Bay, on the west coast of Ireland, in a south-easterly direction, forming a kind of natural breakwater. They belong to the county Galway, and their population in 1901 was 2863. They are called respectively—beginning with the northernmost—Inishmore (or Aranmore), the Great Island; Inishmaan, the Middle Island; and Inisheer, the Eastern Island. The first has an elevation of 354 ft., the second of 259, and the third of 202. Their formation is carboniferous limestone. These islands are remarkable for a number of architectural remains of a very early date. In Inishmore there stand, on a cliff 220 ft. high, large remains of a circular cyclopean tower, called Dun-Aengus, ascribed to the Fir-bolg or Belgae; or, individually, to the first of three brothers, Aengus, Conchobar and Nil, who reached Aran Islands from Scotland in the 1st century A.D. There are seven other similar structures in the group. Inishmore also bears the name of Aran-na-naomh, Aran-of-the-Saints, from the number of religious recluses who took up their abode in it, and gave a celebrity to the holy wells, altars and shrines, to which many are still attracted. No less, indeed, than twenty buildings of ecclesiastical or monastic character have been enumerated in the three islands. On Inishmore are remains of the abbey of Killenda. Christianity was introduced in the 5th century, and Aran soon became one of the most famous island-resorts of religious teachers and ascetics. The extraordinary fame of the foundations here has been inferred from the inscription “VII. Romani” on a stone in the church Teampull Brecain on Inishmore, attributed to disciples from Rome. The total area of the islands is 11,579 acres. The Congested Districts Board made many efforts to improve the condition of the inhabitants, especially by introducing better methods of fishing. A curing station is established at Killeany, the harbour of Inishmore.