Passing from the free and independent
republic of Andorre down into Spain, that
beautiful country with its perilous black eyes,
its stilettoes, its bull-fights, and its absurdities
about blue blood and the like, we come
to the Biscayans, or Basques, the Euskaldunacs,
or the people of the skilful hands, as
they call themselves.

In the destruction of a former world, which
took place when the Euskalduuacs were a
nation, they hold, only a few people escaped,
"as few in number as the olives which remain
on the tree after the fruit has been gathered
in, and as rare as the grapes which hang
upon the vines after the vintage is over." Of
this number was Aïtor, the ancestor and
progenitor of the Euskaldunacs, who, with
his wife, retired into a cave in a high
mountain, waiting until the tremendous battle
between fire and water should be fought out.
He was so frightened at the tumult that he
forgot his own language and invented a new
one, which new one became in time the
dialect of the Basques, called by them the
Eskuare, or the Euskara language. This is
the language of Adam and Eve; the language
of Noah; the one primitive speech of
humanity, as natural to all men as cooing to
the dove, as bellowing to the bull, or as
braying to the donkey.

The Euskaran language, they say, has
sufficient radicals for all the seventy-two
languages which sprang into grammatical
being at the foot of the Tower of Babel., So
that, after all, every other tongue is only an
alterative and a twisted flow; the pith and
marrow through every curve being still and
ever Euskaran. It has its roots in the very
nature of things; and they say that if you
learn it thoroughly, you have the keys to all
the sciences and all the arts. The names of
its thirteen numbers include in those thirteen
words, all the fundamental principles of
natural philosophy, and the numerical
mysteries of Plato and Pythagoras. Its alphabet
is in itself a revelation; it is called Yesus.
However, despite these absurdities, the Spanish
Biscayan speaks a tongue undoubtedly
homogenous, and different to all the surrounding
Celtic languages, approaching more nearly,
according to Humboldt, to some of the dialects
of the North American Indians than to
anything else. It is impossible for strangers to
learn it.—An argument somewhat against the
theory of its primeval use and universal
radicals; against, too, the assertion that it is the
natural language of mankind,—the tongue
which the Caspar Hausers of philological
experiment would speak of themselves; but
favouring the genealogist who made AÏtor,
Noah, and this wonderful tongue a relic of a
past people. For it is marvellously rich and
flexible, far in advance of all the civilisations
that surrounded it when it was young and
newly formed, and now standing as the oldest
language of all spoken in Europe; old
perhaps when Rome was young, and grey-
bearded when Greece was in her teens.
Every one knows that the Spaniards are
descended in a direct line from Noah through
Tubal; but it was a grand stroke of genius
in the proud Biscayan to make their own
immediate progenitor Noah himself. For the
Biscayans hold themselves as demigods over
the Spaniards, despising them with a very
ferocity of contempt, and having no word of
contumely too hard to be flung at them; but
more especially at the Gallacians and Castilians,
who are more the objects of their scorn
than any one else.

They are extremely beautiful—the women
especially lovely, and of a perfectly pure
type. They have large black eyes and
glorious black hair, clear brown skins, and
necks, and shoulders; hands and feet that
would make the fortune of a petite maîtresse
of the cities. The men are perhaps not so
superbly handsome as the women: excepting
in the country places in Italy, they seldom
are: that is a matter of course: but when
they are seen with their red girdles, their
jackets thrown hussar-fashion over their
left shoulder, and their caps set jauntily over
one ear, they are a fine-looking set, so
supple, active, and sinewy, that they seem to
have almost something of the panther or
the leopard in them. They keep their
Sundays puritanically strict in one thing,—the
amusements of the sexes are separate. The
men play at bowls by themselves, and the
women dance apart without cavaliers. They
are famous for their improvisatori, who meet
at festivals and challenge each other in songs
called sorsicos. One song is as ancient, or
rather assumes to be as ancient, as the reign
of Octavius in Rome, to whom it gives a
sufficiently proud defiance; and another,
retained and quoted by our authority, is one
of those exquisitely plaintive national ballads
about a doleful love aud a dying maid, which
have no parallel in the poetry of civilised and
high-fed life. But they have a custom analogous
to that of our western celestial friends,
the Miautsz. When a child is born, and as
soon as the mother can go about the house,
the husband places himself in bed with the
infant, and receives the congratulations of his
friends. This is a custom traced up to AÏtor,
or Noah, to whom, when they were in exile,
his wife bore a son. As she was afraid to
stay by herself, for fear of being discovered
and murdered, she bade her husband take
care of the child while she went out to seek
for food and firing. The practice has been
kept up to the present day, and the
explanation may be received at its value.

To come nearer home. In France the
peasantry believe that toads have teeth, and
bite like dogs, and La Salette and her
companions are articles of faith as strong as
credos and aves; while both they and our own
people have a profound respect for wizards,
and a reverential belief in sorcery, as may be
almost seen daily by the Times reports.