Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 354, April 1845

'Stupuimus omnes tentamina tanta
Conatusque novos.'

And, indeed, many of us laugh heartily. What do I? I love the man himself, and I admire his quick, keen, and happy wit; happy, indeed, if he would turn it to some other subject-matter. But these speculations of his, what credit can we give to them, or what advantage expect from them? Whom shall I persuade that our language is thus supremely ancient – thus pregnant with mysterious meanings? That we here, next the Frozen Pole, are the earliest of mankind? that we alone preserve our language unadulterate and free from foreign admixture? Such assertions challenge laughter, not opposition." Goropius did not live to make any reply, dying shortly after in 1572; but his etymological mantle descended on a worthy successor, in the person of his countryman Adrien Von Scrieck, lord of Rodorn, who followed up the subject, on a slightly modified plan, in three-and-twenty books of Celtic and Belgic Origins, published at Ypres A.D. 1614. Scrieck adopted as the principle of his investigation this position from the Cratylus of Plato. "All things possess some quality which is the proper reason of their respective names; and those words which express things as they exist, are the true names, whereas those that give a contrary meaning are spurious." Nothing can be truer than this, provided only we knew the existing characteristics of each object, as the original namers had them in view when imposing their nomenclature; but when this clue is wanting, no labyrinth can lead an adventurer into more hopeless error. All articulate sounds necessarily resemble one another, and there is no name, either of a place or of a person, in any articulate language, that may not be constrained to bear some resemblance in sound to some words of any other given language. These, it is true, will seldom make sense, and never be truly appropriate; yet, with a little sleight-of-hand, dropping a letter here and adding one there, substituting a mute for a liquid or a liquid for a mute, and so forth, the ingenious etymologist will sometimes produce an equivalent, sounding not unlike the original, and making some sort of sense not altogether inapplicable to the subject-matter. As, for instance, if any one, impressed with the conviction that our own language is the mother tongue of mankind, were to derive Crotona from "Crow-town," he would produce an equivalent, sounding much the same, and having a meaning which might possibly have been quite applicable to Crotona, though 'tis pretty certain that it was not as "a city of kites and crows" that place originally obtained its designation. So Swift's "All-eggs-under-the-grate" sounds very nearly identical with the name of the Macedonian conqueror, though it by no means follows that the son of Philip either was partial to poached eggs, or named accordingly.

Absurd and ridiculous as these instances may appear, they hardly exceed the folly of some of Becan's and Scrieck's derivations from the Dutch. Thus Goropius makes Απολλως Af-hol-los, ("off-hole-loose,") i. e. "ex antro libera," or "I loose (the rays of light) off, or out of, the hole or cavern (of darkness!") and thus Scrieck derives Sequana (the river Seine) from see gang, i. e. "via maris," or the "gang-way to the sea!" and Cecrops from sea-crops, i. e. "a marinâ gulâ," because, we suppose, the Cecropidæ came to Greece with their crops full, (or empty, as the case might be,) after their sea voyage from Egypt.

The indignation and contempt of the learned world seem to have spent themselves on Goropius; and Scrieck's preposterous labour appears only to have excited laughter. The most illustrious writers in every department of erudition had just ceased to occupy the stage. Scrieck, coming out with his thousand folios of puerilities among a public familiar with the works of the two Scaligers, of Cassaubon, Lipsius, Cluver, Cambden, and the other great lights of learning that shed such a lustre on the latter end of the sixteenth century, was regarded much as Beau Coates may have been in latter days, presenting himself in the character of Romeo before audiences accustomed to the highest histrionic efforts of the Kembles. And as Coates, not satisfied with convulsing his audience by dying before them in the regular course of the play, would sometimes die over and over again for their entertainment; so Scrieck, not content with torturing all the names of men and places in Chaldea, Phœnicia, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Gaul, into Dutch equivalents, through the three-and-twenty books of his first impression, followed up his fantasy, in 1615, by an additional essay, in which whatever was extravagant before, became, if possible, still more transcendently nonsensical. Perhaps no part of the entire work is more characteristic of the vanity and blindness of the writer than his preface to this second part, where he gravely takes his guide, Goropius, to task for founding so large a work as the Becceselana on so small a foundation as the "bec" of Psammetichus, and regrets that his predecessor did not confine himself to etymons more consistent with the local and personal characteristics of his several subjects. For his own part the ground he goes upon is this, that the names of men and places among the Chaldeans, Egyptians, Greeks, and Latins, as also among the Scythians, Celts, Etruscans, and Belgæ, (which latter, he says, are all Celts,) are properly significant in that Scythic tongue which the Belgæ and Dutch to this day preserve; whence it follows, says he, "as an argument superior to all exception, that not only the Chaldaic, Egyptian, Greek, and Latin tongues (he does not mention the Hebrew, which he concedes to be the language of Paradise) are inferior and posterior to the tongue now used by the Belgæ and Dutch; but also that the same Belgæ and Dutchmen are extracted from a more ancient people, and a higher original, than the said Chaldeans, Egyptians, Greeks, or Romans."

And that this may appear by sufficient proofs, he proceeds to show that the chief names of men and places in each of these counties are rightly significant in Dutch, and not in their respective proper languages: as, for example —

"Adam —Scythicè Ad-ham, sive Haid-am, ens conjunctivum, 'a united entity.' The Chaldeans," says he, "interpreted Adam to mean 'red,' for what reason I cannot see. It doth not appear a name of sufficient dignity for the first and most perfect and absolute of men. 'Tis much more to the purpose that he should have got the name of an united entity, from the first institution of marriage by his Creator.

"Eva —i. e. heve, significat prægnans vel elevata, ab elevatione ventris; than which nothing could be said more in rem.

"Noe —N'hohe, that is, altus, celsus; as Noah was at the head of time after the deluge. The Chaldeans interpret it cessatio, quies; but Noah," says he, "had neither rest nor quiet during the deluge.

"Moses —mos-es, that is, the 'mud of the waters;' being, when an infant, exposed and raised out of the mud and slime of the river Nile. The Chaldeans interpret his name 'raised,' simply according to the mere circumstance of his being taken up; but the Celtic (i. e. the Dutch) signification denotes the whole fact.

"David —D'af-heid, that is to say, 'lowness,' 'humility.' For David was not only of a low stature, but, above all, low and humble in his mind, as appears from 1 Kings," &c. &c.

After Teutonising the Hebrew in this manner, he next proceeds to the Egyptian.

"Aegyptos —haeg-up-t'hos, that is 'sylvæ supra altitudines,' 'the woody heights above.' (How this is exactly applicable he does not inform us.)

"Nilus —N'hil-ho, that is, the 'high descent,' to wit, of waters; for the Nile descends from the Mountains of the Moon, which are very high.

"Sebenuticum – (a town of the Delta,) Seben-vuyticum, that is, 'the seven-fold outcome;' for the Nile is seven-fold, and hath seven mouths or outlets.

"Pharos —Phær-ho, signifying adnavigatio alti, or the navigation towards the high places; for Pharos is an island with a lofty tower," &c. &c.

Then he takes his course into Greece and Latium, but it would be idle to follow him through a hundredth part of these vagaries. In not a single instance does he pay the least attention to what the Greeks and Romans themselves thought or taught on these subjects, except, indeed, in the solitary case of the Peloponnesus, which he admits may possibly have had its name from Pelops, though he thinks it more likely that it expresses the more appropriate Scythic phrase Pfel-op-on-es– "Campus superior ad aquas," or the fell or plain up, on, or above the water.

Coming in the course of his peregrinations to Etruria, and being equally successful in making all the ancient names of men and places there significant in Dutch, he boldly attempts the interpretation of the Eugubian tablets. These singular remains of the extinct language of Etruria, had already exercised the skill of some of the best scholars of the 16th century, but none of them had succeeded in bending this new bow of Ulysses. To the insane all things are easy. Scrieck made no more of the task than did Ulysses —

"When the wary hero wise,
His hand now familiar with the bow,
Poising it and examining – at once;
As when in harp and song adept, a bard
Unlabouring strains the chord to a new lyre,
The twisted entrails of a sheep below
With fingers nice inserting, and above —
With such facility Ulysses bent
His own huge bow, and with his right hand play'd
The nerve, which in its quick vibration sung
Clear as a swallow's voice."

With equal confidence Scrieck addresses himself to decipher the tablets of Gubbio. "That the Dutch was the language of Etruria," he says, "appears not only from these unquestionably Celtic (i. e. Dutch) names of the most ancient places in Italy, but also by that extraordinary monument of antiquity, the Etruscan inscription, which, Gruter writes me, was found some years back at Eugubio (Gubbio) in Etruria, on eight brazen tablets: the first written in inverted Greek letters, and the rest in Latin characters." These, upon examination, he pronounces to be clearly Dutch, and as a specimen adds some sentences of the sixth table, beginning – Serverent: pemimums: serverent: deitu: etais euo: primater, &c.; and containing, according to his account, near the end the following passage: Serba martia epustote serfia serfir martia tensa serfir sarfer martia fututo. Of which he gives the following version, premising that the 's' in his copy has an additional stroke, which makes it sound st. Sterve mar tie evverstote sterfte sterver maer tier duersaft sterte sterver mar tier vut-vute; i. e. "Let him only die the death who is an extern; let them only die the death who are externs; let them only die the death who are outer externs;" being, as he says, a deprecation merely of the evils of mortality, and a prayer for their infliction on strangers, as Horace says —

Hinc bellum lacrymosum, hinc miseram famem
Pestemque a populo et principe Cæsare, in
Persas atque Britannos,
Vestrâ motus aget prece."

Having rendered this and the incantation for the cure of sprains, given in Cato, "De Re Rustica," into the old Dutch, of which we have had so many specimens, he closes this summary of his labours with the declaration, that whoever, after these proofs, will assert that the Etruscan language was other than the Dutch, cannot be considered otherwise than as non compos mentis.

We had little expectation, when laughing at these vagaries of Scrieck and Becan, many years ago, that it would yet be our lot to see the same follies revived in our own time, and among ourselves. But follies are like fashions, which, having once prevailed in the metropolis, usually run the round of the provinces. And so this fantastic trick of interpreting the names of antiquity by modern equivalents, spreading from the schools of Antwerp and Ypres, still shows itself occasionally in the outskirts of the republic of letters, and has here lately had a new Avatar, fully as absurd as any of its prior exhibitions, among those Jupiters Stators of every exploded folly of the Continent – the English writers on the antiquities of Ireland.

This new Irish Becceselana is entitled "Etruria-Celtica. Etruscan Literature and Antiquities investigated, or the language of that ancient and illustrious people compared and identified with the Iberno-Celtic, and both shown to be Phœnician, by Sir William Betham, Ulster King-at-Arms, Vice-President of the Royal Dublin Society, F.S.A., M.R.I.A., &c. &c."[6 - Printed at Dublin for Philip Dixon Hardy & Sons, 1842.] This title exhibits a design in no respect different from that of Goropius and Scrieck, except in the substitution of the Iberno-Celtic, by the Irish writer, for the Belgico-Celtic equivalents of the Dutch. If there were sufficient reason to suppose that the vice-president of the Royal Dublin Society was acquainted with the Greek and Latin writers who concur in establishing the non-identity of these nations, we would say that he exhibits as culpable a contempt for their authority as his Batavian precursors; but Sir William Betham appears scarcely to have read on the subject at all; and what was wilful presumption on their part, may be the innocence of mere want of knowledge on his; for both Scrieck and Becan were perfectly aware that, in identifying so many nations of antiquity with their own, they were flying in the face of all authority; but Betham Hibernicizes all the nations from Taprobana to Thule, apparently unconscious of any recorded reason against their universal identity.

That the Etruscans spoke Irish, he concludes just as Goropius concluded that the Phrygians spoke Dutch, from the coincidence of a single word having, as he alleges, the same sound and meaning in each; and as a single passage from Herodotus was the sole foundation for the vast inverted pyramid of nonsense piled up by Goropius on that individual point, (and kept from toppling over only by sheer force of impudence,) so the single well-known passage from Suetonius, ascertaining the Etruscan Aesar to be a designation of the Deity, (Aesar being also, as it is said, Irish for the same,) gives the only ground on which Betham rests his extravagant assertion, that the Eugubian inscriptions contain an account of the discovery of Ireland by the Etruscan navigators, and with a pretended version of which, through the medium of Irish, as he alleges, he has filled the whole first volume of his book.

"In reading in Suetonius the life of Augustus," he says, "I found that Aesar in the Etruscan tongue signified God. The import in Irish being the same, it struck me forcibly that this might not be accidental, but that the Etruscan language might be essentially Celtic, and therefore capable of interpretation by the Irish. On examination, the conjecture proved well-founded. The results of the investigation, consequent on the discovery of this clue, will be found in the following pages."

It is true the Etruscan Aesar is said to have a like meaning with an alleged Irish word, coined and spelled by Vallancy aosfhear; but it has also an identical meaning with the Indian eswara, and the Egyptian osiris, and the Islandic aesæ, which makes æsar in the plural; and it would be just as reasonable to infer, that therefore the Etruscans spoke the Hindostanee, or the Coptic, or the Islandic language, as that they spoke Irish.

All the nations of Christendom give God the name Christ; but he would be justly deemed insane who would argue, that therefore English is the proper medium of interpretation for a Russian ukase.

Common sense, without any further learning, might have told Sir William Betham, that till he stood on some surer ground than the coincidence of a single word, even supposing that word a genuine one, it would be the excess of folly to venture on such an application of a modern language; and further learning (if he had possessed it) would have confirmed the suggestion of common sense. With a moderate amount of learning, he would have known that, besides the names of known deities —Kupra, Nyrtia, Mantus, Aukelos, Camillus, corresponding to the heathen Juno, Fortuna, Pluto, Aurora, Mercury – there are also several other Etruscan words of which we know the meanings, such as faland, the heavens; andras, the north wind; lucumo, a king; drouna, a kingdom or principality; damnos, a horse; capra, a goat; agalletor, a youth; verse, fire; ites, the ides of a month; hister, a stage-player; subulo, a trumpeter; italos, a bull; arimoi, monkeys, antar, an eagle; arakos, a lark; gnis, a crane; capys, a falcon; gapos, a chariot; burros, a bowl; atarin, a wine-cruet; nanos, a wanderer; mantissa, an increase or addition; turseis, a space enclosed with walls; and several others, not one of which bears the remotest resemblance to any Irish or Celtic word of equivalent meaning.

Further learning, also, would have taught him the hopelessness of reconciling the Etruscan with any of the languages of Europe known as spoken languages immediately before the Christian era – Dionysius of Halicarnassus having expressly declared, that neither in language nor in customs were the Etruscans of his time similar to any other known nation; and Dionysius was well acquainted with both Celts and Phœnicians.

Besides, the Phœnician equivalents for most of the Etruscan words in the list we have just enumerated, are known, and ought to have been known to any writer undertaking an investigation of either language; and if known to Sir William Betham, ought at once to have deterred him from this preposterous attempt. Thus the Phœnician equivalent of aesar is aloni or alonim; of kypra, astarte; of nyrtia, god; of mantus, much; of faland, samen; of andras, carbon; of lucumo malaho; of damnos, rackabe, &c. &c., in none of which, except samen, does there appear the least similarity, either with the Etruscan or the Irish words of like signification. So also in respect of a number of Gaulish words, the meanings of which have come down to us, and of which no one pretending competency to such enquiries ought to be ignorant, but of the existence of which this vice-president of a leading literary society of Ireland seems utterly unconscious. But fools will rush in where angels fear to tread, and Ignoramus walks with confidence where Eruditus fears to take a step. Reader, do not think that Christopher is too severe! For what but condemnation and contempt can any rational mind conceive, for a writer so incapable of dealing with even the rudiments of his subject, and yet so presumptuous in the temerity of his ignorance, as to declare that "till now not a scintilla of light has appeared on the subject of Etruscan antiquities?" We can pardon learned trifling, but when a man wholly unlearned, on a subject of the greatest interest to the learned world, presumes to dogmatize in this manner, we strip him in an instant, and have no mercy in exposing to both learned and simple the nakedness of his pretensions.

Still facts are facts, and if the fact be, that the tablets of Gubbio are written in the Irish language, and that Sir William Betham, though as ignorant of his subject as was the boy who invented the safety-valve of the steam-engine, has happened in any way, by skill or by chance, learnedly or unadvisedly, modestly or arrogantly, on the truth, let him, together with the condemnation, have the credit he deserves, if not as a Columbus of a new world of letters, at least as a Madoc or a Thorfinn.

The first line of the first table, reading from right to left, he reads thus: we say he, for the very form of some of the letters are still doubtful: – Pune: Carne: Speturie: Atuerie: Abiecati: Naroclum. Is this Irish? If so, we would expect some six Irish words to be adduced, of corresponding sound, and having a grammatical dependence and sensible meaning among themselves. Instead of this, Betham professes to find the equivalent expressions in twenty-four Irish, or quasi-Irish words, which have neither grammatical relation to one another, nor any coherent meaning in their united senses – viz. Pune car na is be tur i e at i i er i e a bi e ca ta na ra ac lu am; i. e. "Phœnician to Carne (the turn) it is night voyage in it likewise in knowledge great in it the being away how it is the going with water on the ocean." And this he tells us, being interpreted, signifies, "O Phœnicians, this is a statement of the night voyage to Carne, (the turn,[7 - A place in Ireland?]) and of the manner of going such great seawise over by the waters of the ocean!"

The only glimmering of any thing like meaning in this string of unconnected verbiage, appears in the detached phrases "night voyage," "the being away," and "going with water on the ocean." But the syllable be, which he renders "night," (on what authority Night and Chaos only know,) is not found in the original; and "being away," depends for its meaning wholly on the certainty that e means "away" in that collocation of words, and not "it," as in the phrases immediately preceding; and there is no suggestion of any reason why it should not here have the same signification as above, or why it should not mean "of" or "from," in both of which senses the writer employs it in the subsequent sentences. "Going with water on the ocean," owes its only pretension to meaning, however absurd, to "going" and "ocean;" but there is no am for "ocean" in the original, and the "ra" which he interprets "going" and "moving," is wholly a coinage of his own brain.

The same may be observed throughout the endless rigmarole of "moon," "stars," "steering," "ocean," "night," "day," "knowledge," "science," and "O Phœnician!" that succeed one another in monotonous repetition for the next 200 pages. Wherever there appears the least symptom of connected meaning or applicable language, (admitting the preposterous supposition that these tables are the records of early voyagers to Ireland,) we invariably find that either the original is departed from, or that the alleged equivalents belong to no known language of articulately-speaking men.

Taking the same liberty of arbitrary division, any one of moderate ingenuity might turn these inscriptions into a jargon just as readable in any language of the world. Divide any sentence of any articulate language into syllables, and apply these alleged Irish words used by Betham as their equivalents, and you may make it an equally authentic record of a voyage to Ireland or to the moon, or a recipe for the toothache, or any thing else you please, with the greatest facility.

Curious reader, tell us, pray, which is the more readable jargon – this,

"God to knowledge agreeable it is quick and water lonely star indeed the to it in day the month this in knowledge with is from the sea very solitary being water with the water the voyage always the coast steering being throughout moon to knowledge in water God indeed the water to danger this the in knowledge with with altogether to night the man from current the being water the to cause knowledge steering water by Ocean the north."

Or this?

"Was which security day and night inform Phœnician from night means in defence by skill throughout the means being also water means voyage from the means as indeed the voyage in it far away people water of the sea in gentle inward it is by wisdom day and night in it is gentle indeed the sea by science which by night in the will be to will be means of the star it far away Phœnician far away steering night and day and then to whence is in the ocean night sailing happy."

We believe most of our readers will incline to say that the one is about as insane gibberish as the other; or if they discover a distinction, will give the palm of a less degree of incoherency to the first. The first is our own; the second is Betham's – being his literal version of the first three sentences of the second table, and in no material respect different from his version of any other three sentences of any of the rest of the series.[8 - We subjoin the original Etruscan text as read by our author, with its alleged Irish equivalents.Bucucum: iubiu: pune: ubef: furfath: tref: bitluf: turuf: | marte: thurie: fetu: pupleeper: tutas: hubinas: tutaper: icubina: | batuba: ferine: fetu: puni: fetu: arbic: ustentu: cutep: pes- nimu.Bu co com iudh be in Pune u be fa for fath tre fa be at lu fa tur u fa | mer ta tur i e fad u prob lu bar to ta is i iudh be i na is to ta bar i co be i na | ba do ba fa ain e fad u Puni fad u ar be iudh us tan do co taib be sni mo.] The other is our own literal version, on the same principle, of a sentence of his own, marked in italics in the following extracts, in which he defends his arbitrary division of the Etruscan text into monosyllables, though the punctuation of the original plainly divides it into many-syllabled words.

In defence of this unjustifiable corruption of the original, he alleges these excuses —

"In the chapter on language, p. 52, &c., are a few remarks upon the division of the words in these inscriptions, in answer to the criticism of the learned Committee of the Royal Irish Academy, who charged me with 'having made alterations' in the text unwarrantably, 'especially in the division of the words.' The charge of having made any alterations is altogether groundless, I might add unjust, uncourteous, and uncalled for. I have not altered a single letter. I have added a letter here and there in the Irish, when, by the genius and character of that language, it was justifiable, as (when) the addition of a word was required to make sense, and when in the original the sound did not require it to be expressed; but this is fully answered and explained in the chapter alluded to. The 'division of the words' requires a few brief observations here.

"It will be observed that in the first five tables there are divisions marked with colons, thus (:); in the sixth and seventh tables, and in the Perugian inscription, the divisions are marked with a single period (.)