Part 18

Now, no German and no Slavonic dialects give us either the meaning of the name Decebalus or any name like it. It stands alone in _European_ history. Where does it appear? In the history of the _Turks_. The first known king of the Turks bears the same name as the last of the Dacians. _Dizabulus_ (Διζαβούλος) was that khan of the Turks of Tartary to whom Justinian sent an embassy when the Avars invaded the Eastern empire.

This (as is freely admitted) is a small fact, if taken alone; but this should not be done. The _cumulative_ character of the evidence in all matters of this kind should be borne in mind, and the value of small facts measured by the extent to which they stand alone, or are strengthened by the coincidence of others. In the latter case they assume importance in proportion to the mutual support they give each other; the value of any two being always more than double that of either taken singly.

On the other hand, each must rest on some separate substantive evidence of its own. To say that _Decebalus was an Agathyrsan because the Agathyrsans were Turks_, and that the _Agathyrsans were Turks because Decebalus was one of them_, is illegitimate. There must be some special evidence in each case, little or much.

Now the evidence that the _Agathyrsi_ were Turks lies in the extent to which (_a_) they were Scythians (_Skoloti_), and (_b_) the Scythians (_Skoloti_) were Turks;--neither of which facts is either universally admitted or universally denied. The present writer, however, holds the Turk character of the Agathyrsi on grounds wholly independent of anything in the present paper; indeed, the suggestion that the _Acatziri_ are _Agathyrsi_ is, not his, but Zeuss'.--(See _Die Deutschen and die Nachbarstämme, v. Bulgari_, p. 714.)

If _Agathyrs-_ be _Akatzir-_ in some older, what is the latter word in any newer form?--for such there probably is. Word for word, it is probably the same as _Khazar_, a denomination for an undoubtedly Turk tribe which occurs for the first time in Theophanes:--Τοῦρκοι ἀπὸ τῆς ἐώας οὓς Χαζάρους ὀνομάζουσιν. This is A. D. 626. Whether, however, the same populations were denoted is uncertain. There are certain difficulties in the supposition that they were absolutely identical.

It is not, however, necessary that they should be so. There might be more than one division of a great stock, like the Turk so called. Nay, they might have been populations other than Turk so designated, provided only that there were some Turk population in their neighbourhood so to call them. More than this. The word may be current at the present moment, though, of course, in a modified form. Suppose it to have been the Turk translation of _pictus_; or rather, suppose the word _pictus_ to be the Latin translation of _Agathyrs-_ (_Akatzir-_): what would the probable consequence be? Even this, that wherever there was a _painted_ (or _tattooed_) population in the neighbourhood of any member of the great Turk stock, the name, or something like it, might arise. Be it so. If the members of the same Turk stock lay wide apart, the corresponding painted or tattooed populations lying wide apart also might take the same name.

The details suggested by this line of criticism may form the subject of another paper. In the present, the author hazards a fresh observation--an observation on a population often associated with the Agathyrsi, viz. the _Geloni_. Seeing that we have such forms as _Unni_ (the Greek form is Οὖννοι, not Οὗννοι) and _Chuni_ ( = _Huns_); _Arpi_ and _Carpi_; _Attuarii_ and _Chattuari_, &c.; and seeing the affinity between the sounds of _g_ and _k_; he believes that the word _Geloni_ may take another form and begin with a vowel (_Elôni_, _Alôni_). Seeing that their locality is nearly that of the _Alani_ of a latter period; seeing that the middle syllable in Alani (in one writer at least) is long--ἀλκήεντες Ἀλαῦνοι; seeing that Herodotus, who mentions the _Geloni_, knows no Alani, whereas the authors who describe the Alani make (with one exception about to be noticed) no mention of the Geloni, he identifies the two populations, Geloni and Alani, or _vice versâ_. He deduces something more from this root _l--n_ (λ--ν). Let the name for the Alans have reached the Greeks of the Euxine through two different dialects of some interjacent language; let the form it took in Greek have been parisyllabic in one case, whereas it was imparisyllabic in the other, and we have two plurals, one in -οι, as Γέλωνοι, Ἄλαυνοι, Ἄλανοι, and another in -ες, as Γέλωνες, Ἄλαυνες, Ἄλανες,--possible, and even probable, modifications of the original name, whatever that was. Now, name for name, Αλανες comes very near Ελληνες; and in this similarity may lie the explanation of the statement of Herodotus as to the existence of certain _Scythian Greeks_ (ἑλληνες Σκυθαι)--iv. 17. 108.

If so these _Scythian Greeks_ were _Alans_.

The exception, indicated a few lines above, to the fact of only one author mentioning both _Geloni_ and _Alani_, is to be found in Ammianus Marcellinus (xxxi. 2. 13. 14). The passage is too long to quote. It is clear, however, that whilst his _Alani_ are spoken of from his own knowledge, his _Geloni_ are brought in from his book-learning, _i. e._ from Herodotus.

NOTES.

NOTE 1.

_Evidence of any kind to the migration, extinction or change of name on the part of the populations in question would invalidate this view. Such evidence has not been produced &c._--The fuller consideration of the question involved in this statement is to be found in Dr. W. Smith's _Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography vv. ~Hunni~, ~Scythia~, and ~Sarmatia~_.

NOTE 2.

_The details suggested by this line of criticism &c._--These are to the effect that in the word _Agathyrsi_ we get an early Turk gloss, of which the history is somewhat curious. It exists, at the present moment in England, having come _via_ Hungary. It exists in Siberia, on the very frontier of the America.

It is the English word _Hussar_ = _Khazar_. Here we have it in its abbreviated form.

It is the Siberian word Yukahir, Yukazhir, or Yukadzhir.

The "_native_ name of the Yukahiri of Siberia is _Andon Domni_. The Koriaks call them _Atal_. Their other neighbours are the Turk Yakuts. Hence it is probable that it is to the Yakut language that the term Yukahir (also _Yukadzhir_) is referrible. If so, its probable meaning is the same as the Koriak _Atal_, which means _spotted_. It applies to the Yukahiri from their spotted deerskin dresses.

Now, south of these same Yakuts, who are supposed to call the Andon Domni by the name Yukahiri (or Yukadzhiri), live a tribe of Tungusians. These are called _Tshapodzhir_--but _not_ by themselves. By whom? By no one so probably as by the Yakuts. Why? Because they tattoo themselves. If so, it is probable that _Yukadzhir_ and _Tshapodzhir_ are one and the same word; at any rate, a likely meaning in a likely language has been claimed for it.

Let it, then, be considered as a Turk word, meaning _spotted_, _tattooed_, _painted_,--provisionally. It may appear in any part of the Turk area, provided only, that some nation to which one of the three preceding adjectives applies be found in its neighbourhood. It may appear, too, in any state of any Turk form of speech. But there are Turk forms of speech as far distant from the Lena and Tunguska as Syria or Constantinople; and there are Turk glosses as old as Herodotus. One of these the present writer believes to be the word _Agathyrsi_, being provided with special evidence to shew that the nation so called were either themselves Turks or on a Turk frontier. Now, the Agathyrsi are called the _picti_ Agathyrsi; and it is submitted to the reader that the one term is the translation of the other--the words _Agathyrs_ (also _Akatzir_), _Yukadzhir_, and _Tshapodzhir_, being one and the same."--From the author's _Native Races of the Russian Empire_.

ON THE LANGUAGE OF LANCASHIRE, UNDER THE ROMANS.

READ BEFORE THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF LANCASHIRE AND CHESHIRE.

8TH JANUARY, 1857.

In the present paper, advantage is taken of the local character of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, to make the name of the county serve as a special text for a general subject. What applies to Lancashire applies to any county in Roman England.

The doctrine is as follows--that in Lancashire particularly, and in England in general, the predominant language for the first five centuries of our era was not Latin but British.

The writer is so far from laying this down as a novelty, that he is by no means certain, that it may not be almost a truism. He is by no means certain, that there is a single one of those to whom he addresses himself, who may now hold, or even have held, the opposite opinion. He is fully aware that excellent authorities have maintained both sides of the question. He is only doubtful as to the extent to which the one doctrine may preponderate over the other.

If the question were to be settled by an appeal to the history of the more influential opinions concerning it, we should find that, in a reference to the earliest and the latest of our recent investigators, Dr. Prichard would maintain one side of the question, Mr. Wright another. The paper of the latter, having been printed in the Transactions of the Society, is only alluded to. The opinion of Dr. Prichard is conveyed in the following extract--"The use of languages really cognate must be allowed to furnish a proof, or at least a strong presumption, of kindred race. Exceptions may indeed, under very peculiar circumstances, occur to the inference founded on this ground. For example, the French language is likely to be the permanent idiom of the negro people of St. Domingo, though the latter are principally of African descent. Slaves imported from various districts in Africa, having no common idiom, have adopted that of their masters. But conquest, or even captivity, under different circumstances, has scarcely ever exterminated the native idiom of any people, unless after many ages of subjection; and even then, vestiges have perhaps always remained of its existence. In Britain, the native idiom was nowhere superseded by the Roman, though the island was held in subjection upwards of three centuries. In Spain and in Gaul, several centuries of Latin domination, and fifteen under German and other modern dynasties, have proved insufficient entirely to obliterate the ancient dialects, which were spoken by the native people before the Roman conquest. Even the Gypsies, who have wandered in small companies over Europe for some ages, still preserve their original language in a form that can be everywhere recognised."[13]

[Footnote 13: Eastern Origin of the Celtic Languages, p. 8.]

Upon the whole, I think that the current opinion is in favour of the language of Roman Britain having been Latin; at any rate I am sure that, before I went very closely into the subject, my own views were, at least, in that direction. "What the present language of England would have been, had the Norman conquest never taken place, the analogy of Holland, Denmark, and many other countries enables us to determine. It would have been as it is at present. What it would have been had the _Saxon_ conquest never taken place, is a question wherein there is far more speculation. Of France, of Italy, of Wallachia, and of the Spanish Peninsula, the analogies all point the same way. They indicate that the original Celtic would have been superseded by the Latin of the Conquerors, and consequently that our language, in its later stages, would have been neither British nor Gaelic, but Roman. Upon these analogies, however, we may refine. Italy was from the beginning, Roman; the Spanish Peninsula was invaded full early; no ocean divided Gaul from Rome; and the war against the ancestors of the Wallachians was a war of extermination."[14]

[Footnote 14: English Language, First Edition, p. 68.]

In these preliminary remarks we find a sufficient reason for going specially into the question; not, however, as discoverers of any new truth, nor as those who would correct some general error, but rather, in a judicial frame of mind, and with the intention of asking, first, how far the actual evidence is (either way) conclusive; next, which way (supposing it to be inconclusive) the presumption lies; and thirdly, what follows in the way of inference from each of the opposing views.

What are the statements of the classical writers, _subsequent to the reduction of Britain_, to the effect that the Romans, when they conquered a Province, established their language? I know of none. I know of none, indeed, _anterior_ to the Britannic conquest. I insert, however, the limitation, because in case such exist, it is necessary to remember that they would not be conclusive. The practice may have changed in the interval.

Is there anything approaching such a statement? There is a passage in Seneca to the effect "that where the Roman conquers there he settles."

But he conquered Britain. Therefore he established his language. Add to this that where he established his own language, there the native tongue became obliterated. Therefore the British died off.

If so, the Angles--when they effected _their_ conquest--must have displaced, by their own English, a Latin rather than a British, form of speech.

But is this the legitimate inference from the passage in question? No. On the contrary, it is a conclusion by no means warranted by the premises. Nevertheless, as far as external testimony is concerned, there are no better premises to be found.

But there is another element in our reasoning. In four large districts at least,--in the Spanish Peninsula, in France, in the Grisons, and in the Danubian Principalities--the present language is a derivative from the Latin, which was, undoubtedly and undeniably, introduced by the Roman conquest. From such clear and known instances, the reasoning to the obscure and unknown is a legitimate analogy, and the inference is that Britain was what Gallia, Rhætia, Hispania, and Dacia were.

In this we have a second reason for the fact that there are many who, with Arnold, hold, that except in the particular case of Greece, the Roman world, in general, at the date of the break-up of the Empire, was Latin in respect to its language. At any rate, Britannia is reasonably supposed to be in the same category with Dacia--a country conquered later.

On the other hand, however, there are the following considerations.

I. In the first place the Angle conquest was gradual; so gradual as to give us an insight into the character of the population that was conquered. Was this (in language) Latin? There is no evidence of its having been so. But is there evidence of its having been British? A little. How much, will be considered in the sequel.

II. In the next place the Angle conquest was (and is) incomplete; inasmuch as certain remains of the earlier and non-Angle population still exist. Are these Latin? Decidedly not; but on the contrary British,--witness the present Britons of Wales, and the all but British Cornish-men, who are now British in blood, and until the last century were, more or less, British in language as well.

But this is not all. There was a third district which was slow to become Angle, viz.: part of the mountain district of Cumberland and Westmoreland. What was this before it was Angle? Not Roman but British.

Again--there was a time when Monmouthshire, with (no doubt) some portion of the adjoining counties, was in the same category in respect to its _non_-Angle character with Wales. What was it in respect to language? Not Roman but British.

Again--_mutatis mutandis_. Devonshire was to Cornwall as Monmouth to Wales. Was it Roman? No--but, on the contrary, British.

Now say, for the sake of argument, that Cornwall, Wales, and Cumberland were never Roman at all, and consequently, that they prove nothing in the question as to the introduction of the Latin language. But can we say, for even the sake of argument, that Devon and Monmouth were never Roman? Was not, on the contrary, Devon at least, exceedingly Roman, as is shewn by the importance of Isca Danmoniorum, or Exeter.

Or, say that the present population of Wales is no representative of the ancient occupants of that part of Britain, but, on the contrary, descended from certain immigrants from the more eastern and less mountainous parts of England. I do not hold this doctrine. Admitting it, however, for the sake of argument--whence came the present Welsh, if it came not from a part of England where British, rather than Latin, was spoken? There must have been British somewhere; and probably British to the exclusion of Latin.

The story of St. Guthlac of Croyland is well-known. It runs to the effect that being disturbed, one night, by a horrid howling, he was seriously alarmed, thinking that the howlers might be _Britons_. Upon looking-out, however, he discovered that they were only devils--whereby he was comforted, the Briton being the worse of the two. Now the later we make this apocryphal story, the more it tells in favor of there having been Britons in Lincolnshire, long after the Angle conquest. Yet Lincolnshire (except so far as it was Dane,) must have been one of the most Angle portions of England. In France, Spain, Portugal, the Grisons, Wallachia or Moldavia, such devils as those of St. Guthlac would have been Romans.

As the argument, then, stands at present, we have traces of the British as opposed to the Angle, but no traces of the Latin in similar opposition.

Let us now look at the _analogies_, viz: Spain, (including Portugal,) France, Switzerland and the Danubian Principalities; in all of which we have had an aboriginal population and a Roman conquest, in all of which, too, we have had a third conquest subsequent to that by Rome--even as in Britain we have had the triple series of (A) native Britains, (B) Roman conquerors, (C) Angles.

What do we find? In all but Switzerland, remains of the original tongue; in all, without exception, remains of the language of the population that conquered the Romans; in all, without exception, something Roman.

In Britain we find nothing Roman; but, on the contrary, only the original tongue and the language of the third population.

I submit that this is strong _primâ facie_ evidence in favour of the Latin having never been the general language of Britain. If it were so, the area of the Angle conquest must have exactly coincided with the area of the Latin language. Is this probable? I admit that it is anything but highly improbable. The same practicable character of the English parts of Britain (as opposed to the Welsh, Cornish, and Cumbrian) which made the conquest of a certain portion of the Island easy to the Romans as against the Britons, may have made it easy for the Angles as against the Romans; and _vice versa_, the impracticable character of Wales, Cornwall, and Cumberland, that protected the Britons against their first invaders, may have done the same for them against the second. If so, the two areas of foreign conquest would coincide. I by no means undervalue this argument.

It is almost unnecessary to say that the exact conditions under which Britain was reduced were not those of any other Roman Province.

In respect to Spain, the Roman occupancy was _early_, having begun long before that of Northern and Central Gaul, having begun during the Punic wars, and having become sufficiently settled by the time of Augustus to command the attention of Strabo on the strength of the civilization it had developed. In Spain, then, there was priority in point of time to account for any extraordinary amount of Roman influences.

Gaul, with the exception of the earlier acquisitions in the Narbonensis, was the conquest of one of the most thorough-going of conquerors. The number of enemies that Cæsar slaughtered has been put at 1,000,000. Without knowing the grounds of this calculation, we may safely say that his campaigns were eminently of a destructive character.

The conquerors of the Breuni, Genauni, and similar occupants of those parts of Switzerland where the Rumonsch Language (of Latin origin) is now spoken, were men of similar energy. Neither Drusus nor Tiberius spared an enemy who opposed. Both were men who would "make a solitude and call it peace."

That Trajan's conquest of Dacia was of a similar radical and thorough-going character is nearly certain.

Now, the evidence that the conquests of the remaining provinces were like those of the provinces just noted, is by no means strong. At the same time, it must be admitted that the analogy established by four such countries as Gaul, Spain, Switzerland, and Moldo-Wallachia is cogent. What was the extent to which Africa, Pannonia, Illyricum, Thrace, and the Mœsias were Romanized? Of Asia? I say nothing. It was sufficiently Greek to have been in the same category with Greece itself, and in Greece itself we know that no attempts were made upon the language.

Africa was Latin in its literature; and, at a later period, pre-eminently Latin in its Christianity. But the evidence that the vernacular language was Latin is _nil_, and the presumptions unfavourable. The Berber tongue of the present native tribes of the whole district between Egypt and the Atlantic is certainly of high antiquity; it being a well-known fact, that in it, several of the names in the geography of classical Africa are significant. Now this is spread over the country indifferently. Neither does it show any notable signs of Latin intermixture. Neither is there trace, or shadow of trace, of any form of speech of Latin origin throughout the whole of Tunis, Tripoli, Algiers or Morocco.

In Pannonia and Illyricum, the same absence of any language of Latin origin is manifest. Pannonia and Illyricum have had more than an average amount of subsequent conquerors and occupants--Goths, Huns, Avars, Bulgarians, Slavonians, Hungarians, Germans. That the Slovak, however, in the north, and the Dalmatian forms of the Servian in the south, represent the native languages is generally admitted--now, if not long ago. These, then, have survived. Why not, then, the Latin if it ever took root?

In respect to Thrace, it is just possible that it may have been, in its towns at least, sufficiently Greek to have been in the same category with Greece proper. I say that this is just possible. In reality, however, it was more likely to be contrasted with Greece than to be classed with it. One thing, however, is certain, viz.:--that the country district round Constantinople was never a district in which Latin was vernacular. Had it been so, the fact could hardly have been unnoticed, or without influence on the unequivocally Greek Metropolis of the Eastern Empire.

If the doctrine that Thrace may have been sufficiently Greek to forbid the introduction of the Latin be doubtful, the notion that the Mœsias were so is untenable. Yet the Latin never seems to have been vernacular in either of them. Had it been so, it would probably have held its ground, especially in the impracticable mountains and forests of Upper Mœsia or the modern Servia. Yet where is there a trace of it? Of all the Roman Provinces, Servia or Upper Mœsia seems to be the one wherein the evidence of a displacement of the native, and a development of a Latin form of speech, is at its _minimum_, and the instance of Servia is the one upon which the analogous case of Britain best rests.

The insufficiency of the current reasons in favour of the modern Servian being of recent introduction have been considered by me elsewhere.