LITMIR.BIZ

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back, that "about this time the Creation took place."

      They are not stilted in their pride, however; your true Basque cares much for his descent and little for its dignities. "Where the McGregor sits," he would affirm, "there is the head of the table," and so he cares nothing about the nominal headship. He lives a free, busy life in the hill-country or near the sea, stalwart, swarthy, a lover of the open air, apt at work and sufficiently enterprising, self-respecting, "proud as Lucifer and combustible as his matches," in no case pinchingly poor, but rarely rich, and never in awe of his own coat-of-arms.

      Writers uniformly take a wicked pleasure in maligning the Basque language. Its spelling and syntax, its words and sentences, its methods of construction, are openly derided. Unusual word-forms and distended proper names are singled out and held up to jeers and contumely. A Spanish proverb asserts that as to pronunciation the Basques write "Solomon" and pronounce it "Nebuchadnezzar." The devil, it is alleged, studied for seven years to learn the Basque tongue; at the end of that time he had mastered only three words and abandoned the task in disgust. "And the result is," adds a vivacious writer, "that he is unable to tempt a Basque, because he cannot speak to him, and that consequently every Basque goes straight to heaven. Unfortunately, now that the population is beginning to talk French, (which the devil knows terribly well,) this privilege is disappearing."

      Overhearing disjointed Basque phrases on the Biarritz beach or here in the streets and cafés of St. Jean, one will not blame the devil's discouragement. There is scarcely one familiar Aryan syllable. For centuries their speech was not even a written one; there is said to be no book in Basque older than two hundred years. But, its strangeness and isolation once allowed for, there is in reality much to defend in the Basque language. As spoken, it is far from being harsh, and falls pleasantly, often softly, on the ear; the sounds are clear, the articulations rarely, hurried as with the French. The words, other than a few proper names, do not exceed a sober and reasonable length, and as to spelling, every letter has its assigned use and duty; there are no phonetic drones. The original root-forms are short and always recognizable; the full words grow from these by an orderly if intricate system of inflections and the forming of derivatives.

      The inflections are, it must be admitted, intricate. Each noun boasts two separate forms, and each of its declension-cases keeps a group of sub-cases within reach for special emergencies. There are only two regularly ordained verbs—"to be" and "to have"; but they don different canonicals for each different ceremony, and their varying garbs seem fairly without limit. In the Grammaire Basque of M. Gèze, published in Bayonne, I count no less than one hundred and eight pages of closely-set tables needed to paint the opalescent hues of these multiform auxiliaries—and this only in one dialect, out of six in all. M. Chaho, an essayist of weight and himself a Basque, informs us artlessly and seriously that one counts a thousand and forty-five forms for their combined present indicatives, and a trifle over ten thousand forms for the two fully expanded verbs; and yet the language, he hastens to add, is so magically simple that even a Basque child never makes an error!

      As to its appearance in print, the reader may judge for himself, for here is one of their favorite love-songs. These light songs abound, many being surprisingly delicate and dainty.

      BASQUE SONG

       "Chorittoua, nourat houa, Bi hegalez airian? Espaňalat jouaiteco, Elhurra duc bortean. Algarreki jouanen guiuc Elhurra hourtzen denian. "San Josefen ermita Desertion gora da. Espaňalat jouaiteco, Han da goure pausada. Guibelerat so'guin eta Hasperrenak ardura? "Hasperrena, habiloua Maitiaren borthala. Bihotzian sar hakio Houra eni beçala; Eta guero erran izoc Nic igorten haidala."

      A graceful English version of the above is in existence, and will fitly complement its original:

      "Borne on thy wings amidst the air,

       Sweet bird, where wilt thou go?

       For if thou wouldst to Spain repair,

       The ports are filled with snow.

       Wait, and we will fly together,

       When the Spring brings sunny weather.

       "St. Joseph's hermitage is lone,

       Amidst the desert bare,

       And when we on our way are gone,

       Awhile we'll rest us there;

       As we pursue our mountain track,

       Shall we not sigh as we look back?

       "Go to my love, O gentle sigh,

       And near her chamber hover nigh;

       Glide to her heart, make that thy shrine,

       As she is fondly kept in mine.

       Then thou mayst tell her it is I

       Who sent thee to her, gentle sigh!"

      —COSTELLO.

      In regard to length of words, there exist undoubtedly some surprising examples, but they are merely compound expressions and quite in analogy with those of better known and less abused tongues. The German, for one, indulges in such with notorious yet unrebuked frequency. One is naturally startled at encountering in Basque such imbrications as Izarysaroyarenlarrearenbarena, or Ardanzesaroyareniturricoburua, which are actual names of places in Spanish Basque-land; but they are mercifully rare, and when analyzed prove to be rational and even poetic formations, laden with a full equivalent of import—the first of the above two signifying "the centre of the field of the mountain of the star," and the second, "the summit of the fountain of the mountain of the vine."

      These be scarcely fair samples, however. Commoner words and some of their more musical phrases are instanced in the following, taken in the dialect of this region of St. Jean:

Haran,	Valley.	Lo,	Sleep.
Etchelde,	Farm.	Etche,	House.
Ogi,	Bread.	Etchetar,	Household.
Egur,	Wood.	Nerhaba,	Child.
Maraza,	Hatchet.	Nescatcha,	Maiden.
Nekarsale,	Workman.	Zorioneko,	Happy.
Aita,	My father.	Ama,	My mother.
	Neure maiteak,	My loved ones.

      Home words, such as these latter, give a glimpse of this people's home life. For they are devoted to their household as to their tribe, and uniformly show a certain homely honesty and simplicity underneath all their free ways. Love of smuggling does not impugn this honesty—in their own view, at all events; for the Basque, man and woman, is a born smuggler, and believing it right is not ashamed. Indeed, they make common cause of it; for years, if a revenue officer detected and shot a Basque

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