BOOK XCIX. an months. of the Beotians, which are both Æolisms that were used instead of Kephala. The Albanian name for Slavonia is Schienia, the country of strangers, from skenos, the Æolic form of xenos; the Eolic word skiphos, a sword, may account for Skipatar, an Albanian name, of which the meaning has not been explained. The digamma appears in many words; thus oraam, to kill or injure, from raiein; vel, oil, from elaion; verbuem, to bereave, orbare (Latin); verra, fine weather, from ear or er, the spring; in like manner Voioussa, the name of a river, the ancient Aous or Aious. The Albanian is by means of its Æolic character connected Names of with the Macedonian; Loos, the Macedonian name for the Macedoni month of August, corresponds with the Loonar of the Albanians; the first and second brit, the names of two months in Albanian, recall to our recollection the beritios and hyperberitios in the Macedonian calendar. Krios, a word used by the Macedonian peasants, is analogous to the Albanian kirsouer, for ouer signifies a season. We have entered on a subject, which cannot at present be fully treated; no vocabulary of the Albanian language exists; the indigenous names of all the months have not hitherto been collected. The Pelasgic character has been evinced by a curious Connexion and important fact, the names of several Greek divinities, Pelasgic. according to Herodotus, are derived from the Pelasgic. Thus in the Albanian language, deet signifies the sea, hence probably Tethys the goddess of the ocean; dee the earth, hence Deo and Demeter, surnames of Ceres; héré, the air, Heré, Juno; dieli the sun, Delios, a surname of Apollo, the god of the sun; vranie, a cloud, uranos, the heavens. Herodotus mentions Juno only among these divinities; but it is enough to show that the most ancient Greek words have been preserved in the Albanian language; besides, Herodotus, from his own confession, was ignorant of the Pelasgic; having said that the Pelasghi were of a different origin from the Greeks, he tells us in another part of his work with the BOOK that they were the ancestors of the Athenians, Arcadians, XCIX. and Thessalonians; it may therefore be reasonably believ the Pe ed that the historian has accommodated the mythology of the Pelasghi to that of the Egyptians and Lybians. The Pelasghi were supposed in ancient times to have been the first who ruled over Greece, they inhabited Pindus at a very early period, the Pelasgic Dodona was the centre of their worship, and their descendants were the people who styled Names of themselves Autochtones or Aborigines. It is not wonderful lasghi. that an old, rude, and monosyllabical dialect, although of semi-Greek origin, appeared unintelligible to an Ionian like Herodotus; the very name of the Pelasghi, as well as those of Pella, Pellené Pelion, Peligni and twenty others of places and people, may explain the old Macedonian and Thessalonian word pela, a rock or stone.* It is vain to regard the hypotheses of different writers, or to make the Pelasghi come from the sources of the Nile, the summits of Caucasus, or the tower of Babel; they were in reality the ancestors of the Greeks, the people of the old rock, the stone builders; their worship was wholly European, and founded on the belief of a supreme being and inherent powers in nature. The names which geography, and particularly physical geography have consecrated, may be considered the most important documents of primitive history, or of history anterior to chronology. Men, long before they thought of computing years, or arranging events according to the order of their dates, designated by local denominations, taken from the dialects in which they spoke, all the objects that surrounded them; the mountains that bounded their horizon, the rivers in which their thirst was quenched, the village that gave them birth, and the family or tribe to which they belonged; had that geographical nomenclature been preserved purc and entire, a map of the world might have * Sturtz, de Lingua Macedonia. Tzetres, Chiliad. II. c. XVII. been obtained, more valuable far than all the universal BOOK histories. thus XCIX. Connexion It is best, in order to discover the Hellenic structure of the Albanian language, to compare words that are not of common with the occurrence, or such as are used in dialects little known; Hellenic. groua a woman, corresponds with Graia, a Grecian woman; kourm, the body, with kormos, a throne or trunk of a tree; khunde, the nose, with chondros cartilage; dora, the hand, with doron, the palm of the hand; ziza, a nipple, with tithe, a nurse; groust, the fist, with gronthos; cambe, the foot, with kampé, flexion; ngrane, to nourish with graien; flacha, a flame with phlox; krupa, salt, with kruos crystal; stepei, a house, with stephos, a roof or covering; brecheir, hail, with brechein, to wet, and with eir, a tempest or thunder; iourte, prudent, with iotes prudence, (Homer); iri, young, with ear or er, the spring; koitou, I remember, with kotheoo, I think; ve, an egg, with oveon, a word used in the Cretan dialect; chata poverty with chatein to want; skepetim, thunder, with skepto, I fall with force; phare, a division or tribe, with pharas, the pars of the Latins; prink, a father or chief, with prin before (primus), frike, fear, with phrix, trembling; bastakes, a Beotian term for a farm, with bastine, a rural domain in Albanian. We have cited such examples as are not very obvious, the relation between them is not at first discovered; but a great number of analogies more evident and more easily traced, must strike those who study the language. Many Albanian and Greek words differ only in their grammatical forms, thus piim and piein, to drink, pounouem and ponein, to labour, zieim and zeein, to boil; luem, to anoint, laam to wash, and louein to bathe; pituem to ask, and pythesthai; prim and proienai, to go before; the prepositions, nde, within, (endo,) paa, without, and apo from, me and meta, with; the adverbs mo and me not; and other instances too numerous to be adduced. It is observable that some Albanian terms are Hellenic compounds, although there are no single words corresponding with them in the Greek. Panoni, the Albanian term for anarchy, is formed from the preposi XCIX. BOOK tion pa, which is not different from the Greek apo, and nomos, law; it may therefore be considered the same, as the old or obsolete Greek term aponomia. The Greek word hippos, a horse, was probably derived from the Albanian verb, hippūne to mount or leap; the names of mountains and people in primitive Greece, were perhaps of Albanian origin. Connexion with the Latin. The Albanian words derived from the Latin might have been introduced at different epochs; at all events it is not easy to determine the relation between these two languages; some etymologists observe an analogy in the Eolic, the Albanian and ancient Latin; but much of the resemblance between the two last may be attributed to the mixture of the Celtic with the Albanian and old Italian dialects; besides, the Roman military colonies must have disseminated the Romana rustica in Illyria and Epirus. If the history of the Tyrrhenians and other Italian tribes were not involved in obscurity, more accurate notions might be formed on the subject, but it is easy to adduce several instances, by which it must appear that the Albanian is connected with the dialects of ancient Italy. Kiel, the heavens, cœlum; lioume, a river, flumen; mik, a friend, amicus; sok, a companion or ally, socius; lake, a marsh or lake, lacus; flochete, hair, floccus ; lufta, war or struggle, lucta; pisch, a fish, piscis; peeme and poma, fruits; remb, a branch, ramus; fakie, the face, facies; martuem, to marry, maritare; turbuem, to trouble, turbare; pulchuem, to please, placere; desciruem, to desire, desiderare; kiam, to cry, (chiamar); vape, moderately warm, vapidus; spess thick, spissus; cundra against, contra; per by or through, per. It may be remarked that the Latinisms or Italianisms in the Albanian are very like those in the Wallachian, or Daco-Roman; that circumstance alone may, in some measure, show how long the Albanian has been connected with the Latin. The word mi expresses the comparative in the Albanian, and is analogous to the irregular comparatives minor and melior of the Latins. F 3 Ssum the term for the superlative, (or according to its pronunciation, schoume,) appears to be the same as summe. BOOK XCIX. Celticisms To ascertain the Celticisms and Germanisms in the Albanian is by no means an unprofitable task; they cannot be and Gerattributed to accidental causes, for these words form part of manisms. a numerous class in different languages; thus larth in Albanian, lard in French and English; lardum in Latin, lar, fat in Celtic, and larix, laeriche, larch, laerke, a resinous tree in Latin, German, English and Danish, indicate a resemblance between the northern and western tongues. Bret, a king, breteri, a kingdom, brii, a horn, bar, grass, bres, a girdle, droe, dread; brittune, to diffuse or radiate, and bleem, to buy, are evidently Celto-Gallic words. Miel, flour, buck, bread, hethe, fever, goistie, a feast, chierra, a car; cand, an angle; gind, kind, tim, smoke, (dimma in Swedish) sim a shower, nata, night, dera, a gate, iil, a star in the dialect of Epirus; (ild, fire in Danish,) bir, a son; baern, bairns; children in Danish and Scots, oulk, a wolf, siou, eyes, ve, an oath, and many others are almost literally German or Gothic. It is difficult to account for these facts from the migrations of different people, but they may be easily explained, if we admit that the ancient population of Hemus was made up of Celtic, Slavonic and German tribes, as well as Pelasgian, Hellenic and Asiatic. We now come to the third division of the Albanian language, which consists of unknown roots, or at least of such as have not hitherto been explained, we might at first have been apt to leave the examination of the subject to orientalists, and to suppose that these words were exclusively of 3 Asiatic origin, because they are apparently foreign to every known European language. But as we have occasionally been able to account for some of these roots, and to connect them, in spite of their irregularity, with the Hellenic and other European dialects, we were led to conclude that the primitives of a pure and indigenous language, like the Albanian, must have been at one time common to the Thracian, Illyrian, Phrygian and Lydian, and that the |