[4] As is plain by the sequel, where the angel hangs him for a moment, the original story must have had “hanged.” This is a good example of the way in which the dress of a story gets gradually altered, as old customs are forgotten among a people.
[5] This whole picture is, unhappily, more true to life than one would think at first sight. The whole history of the Cagots, and a good deal of that of witchcraft, shows how virulent this kind of irrational dislikes is, and how difficult to deal with and to overcome when once they have been introduced into a rural population.
An Essay on the Basque Language,
By M. Julien Vinson.
The Basque Language is one which is particularly attractive to specialists. Its place in the general series of idioms has at last been well defined—it is an agglutinative and incorporating language, with some tendency to polysynthetism. It consequently finds a place in the second great morphological linguistic group, between the Finnic and the North American family of languages. I shall now attempt a very short sketch of its general features; but I must ask permission, first, briefly to state some of the most essential principles of the science of language.
It is acknowledged that the science of language—that is to say, the science of the characteristic phenomenon of the human species, is a purely natural science. It has nothing in common with philology, which is mainly a historical study. Whether it be called linguistique, glottology, phonology, or even, by a too common abuse, comparative philology, the science of language follows the same method as the other natural sciences, and advances by observation and experience. The direct subject-matter of this science is those vocal organisms which express, by sensible sounds, thought and its divers modes of existence. These organisms are the spontaneous and unconscious product of organs which, as natural phenomena, fall under the general law of perpetual variation, acted on by their surroundings, climate, &c.; but as incapable of being modified by the external or internal exercise of human volition as any other of the organized beings which surround us.
But as the object of language is to express thought in all its niceties, both the fact that gives rise to it, and the modifications of it caused by time and space, so it is seen that different idioms have adopted different methods of expressing, in the best and readiest manner, the idea, the conception or intuition, with its variable forms, in order to translate with precision its signification, and its relations. From this point of view language has been divided into three great groups: the first, that of isolating languages, wherein the monosyllabic roots all retain their meaning, and wherein the relations are only expressed conventionally, i.e., were not originally expressed at all; the second, that of agglutinative languages, in which the relations are expressed by roots once significative, but now reduced to a secondary and subordinate office; lastly, the third, that of inflectional languages, in which the change of relations is expressed by a modification in the root itself, and even in the radical vowel. It is clear that the idioms of the second group were once isolating, and that inflectional idioms have passed through both the former states. We conclude from this that language is essentially progressive and variable in the sense of a constant improvement in the expression of relations. And yet, in the study of existing languages we find, on the contrary, that they are often in this respect inferior to their ancestors.
This contradiction, however, is only an apparent one. Thus, as Schleicher has demonstrated, languages are born, grow up, become stationary, decline and die; in a word, live after the same fashion as do organized beings. There are in every language two principal periods—that of formal development, during which the idiom passes from the first (monosyllabic) stage to the second (agglutinative) by reducing certain roots to a secondary and dependent office, then from the second to the third (inflectional) by a new effort to express simultaneously signification and relation; and that of formal decay, during which the original meaning of the relative affixes is more and more forgotten, they get worn out, change by degrees, and often end by perishing altogether. Formal decay begins when a language becomes historical, and it often gives rise to remarkable cases of regressive metamorphosis. One remark which we must make on this subject is that the known agglutinative languages have not spontaneously arrived at historical life—that is to say, have not commenced their decay, except under the influence of a foreign idiom either isolating or inflectional. Nevertheless, during their decay, languages can adopt fresh forms, but these are merely composed of words already in use; man in the historical period has no longer bare roots at his service.[1]