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Ach mun tig an saoghal gu crioch,
Bithidh I mar a bha.

O sacred dome and my beloved abode!

Whose walls now echo to the praise of God;

The time shall come when lauding monks shall cease,

And howling herds here occupy their place.

But better ages shall hereafter come,

And praise re-echo in the sacred dome.

Tradition has it that forty-eight Scottish kings, four Irish monarchs and eight Norwegian princes were interred in Iona, and that so marked a preference for Iona as a place of interment was the result of this prophecy of Columba.

Seachd bliadhna roimh 'n bhrath,

Thig muir, thar Eirinn re aon trath;

'S thar Ile ghuirm ghlais,

Ach snamhaidh I Cholum clairich.

Seven years before that awful day
When time shall be no more,

A watery deluge shall o'ersweep,
Hibernia's mossy shore.

The green clad Islay too shall sink,
Whilst with the great and good,
Columba's happy isle shall rear
Her towers above the flood.

DÉNÉ ROOTS.

BY THE REV. FATHER A. G. MORICE, O.M.I.

(Read 21st November, 1891.)

I. INTRODUCTION.

As

Comparative Philology considered as a distinct science cannot boast of a very ancient origin. As late as a hundred years ago, it was still in its infancy. Of course the study of languages for the sake of philological deductions had been prosecuted long before with varying success. far back as A.D. 1563, Pigafetta, the naive chronicler of Magellan's discoveries, enriched his narrative with three vocabularies of foreign tongues*, and his example was followed by some later navigators. Missionaries also walked in his footsteps, though they generally paid more attention to texts than to words, some of them concentrating their efforts towards the collecting of the Lord's Prayer in as many languages as possible. Yet it is to Leibnitz that we must look for the first author of repute who applied himself to the systematic study of foreign tongues with a view of deducing therefrom ethnological conclusions. "Je trouve," he says in a letter to Father Verjus,+" que rien ne sert d'avantage à juger des connexions des peuples que les langues. Par exemple, la langue des Abyssins nous fait connaitre qu'ils sont une colonie d'Arabes." Lacroze and Reland,§ his followers in the same scientific field, pursued their studies animated by a like spirit and reached similar conclusions.

However, it was not until the reign of Catherine II. of Russia that Comparative Philology began to assume a separate and concrete form. That monarch drew out a list of one hundred Russian words and had them translated in as many languages as possible. She soon discovered unexpected affinities, and with her own hand drew up comparative tables. About the same time, Dom Pezron, a learned Benedictine, showed by numerous examples that many words of the Greek language have a Celtic origin. Vous serez surpris," he wrote to a friend," "quand je vous dirai que j'ai environ sept ou huit cents mots

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* Navigationi e Viaggi raccolti già M. Gio. Bat. Ramusio, Ven. 1563.

+G. Leibuitii opera omnia, edit. Dut. Vol. vi., Part II., p. 227.

Commerc. Epistol. tom III., p. 79, Leips. 1742.

§ Ubi suprà, p. 78.

Grecs, je dis de simples racines, qui sont tirés de la langue des Celtes, avec presque tous les nombres. Par example, les Celtes disent dec, dix, et les Grecs déza. Les Celtes disent pemp, cinq, et les anciens Grecs Eoliens πεμπέ. Les Celtes disent pedwar ou petoar, quatre, et les Eoliens RETOPE. Les Celtes disent undec, ouze; ddoudec, douze, etc. Les Grecs, ενέκα, δο έκα, etc. Jugez du reste par cet échantillon."* Another pioneer in the Comparative-philological field, Col. Vans Kennedy, wrote a work wherein he quotes nine hundred words common to Sanskrit and other idioms. Lastly, in the early years of this century, the German Francis Bopp, in his Das Conjugationssystem, instituted a comparison between the grammatical systems of Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Persian and German which won for him the title of founder of Comparative Philology.

The paramount importance of such studies is evident, inasmuch as even those scholars who deny the common origin of the human race allow that identity or similarity of language between nations however distant cannot be the result of mere chance, but proves some real connection of origin or early relationship. Nor have believers in the original unity of mankind ever failed to perceive it. "It is then," says Abel Rémusat, "we should be able to pronounce with decision what, according to the language of a people, was its origin, what the nations with which it has stood in relations, what the character of those relations was to the stock it belongs to."+

These researches which brought forth such valuable ethnological and archæological results in connection with peoples, as the European and most of the Asiatic nations, whose historical data are embodied in well authenticated records, cannot fail to prove at least as useful relatively to such races as the American tribes which have no other history than a few vague and disconnected legends and traditions. Nay, it might almost be said that Comparative Philology is in their case the only beacon which can throw any light upon their origin, their migrations and their connection with the other branches of the human family. Unless, of course, we choose to believe in their autochthony and thereby reject the only authority upon which we can depend as upon an unerring guide, I mean the inspired Books. For, as there is on our planet but one species of man, and as the Bible furnishes us with only one Genesis, it follows that, unless we regard the American continent as the cradle of the human race-which I think nobody is prepared to do-we must look to the old world for the birth place of our Aborigines.

*Encyclopedie ou Dictionnaire universel raisonné, art. Celtes. +Recherches sur les Langues Tartares, Vol. I., p. xxix.

And let nobody say that, because the American facies and physique in general are somewhat different from those of the nations of Europe and Asia, we must conclude to a diversity of origin as well as of race. Have we not in our own Indo-European family types more dissimilar than those which characterize the American and some Asiatic races? Surely nobody will deny that a North American Aborigine is physically more alike to a Samoyed or a Mongolian than the inhabitants of the Indian peninsula resemble either a German or a Greek*. Even in such ethnological subdivisions as the Celtic and the Italic, we find notable differences of type and complexion. Yet nobody ever dreamt of considering, for instance, the Irish or the Saxons, and the French or the Italians as the products of two distinct creations.

The question then for the Christian ethnographer is: Since we cannot regard the American tribes as autochthonous, in what part of the old world are we to find their parents or relatives?

Many have been the answers to that query, and the opinions of Americanists have been so varied and contradictory that the student is fairly puzzled as to whichis the most plausible. Grotius, de Laet, Garcia and others discussed it in their days with more learning than judgment. To Brerewood, Korn, Jefferson, Charlevoix, Buffon and Cuvier, the red skins were nothing else than expatriated Mongolians or Scyths. Foster even designated the Tartar emperor Kublai-Khan as the virtual colonizer of the New World. Mitchell made the North American Indians regular Samoyeds. During the last century and early in this, a number of writers; treating many primitive usages of mankind as particularly Jewish, endeavoured to prove that the Americans were descended from one of the twelve tribes.

But, without disregarding what there might be of truth in any of these conflicting theories, it must be confessed that sociology is of itself utterly unequal to the task of solving such a problem. Comparative Philology, alone of all the kindred sciences, can claim the right and ability to do so. It was thus understood by the judicious Reland who may be regarded as one of the first to collect from travellers specimens of American languages. Later on, Smith Barton made considerable progress in the attempt to compare words in the American dialects with terms found among the nations of Northern and Eastern Asia. "In 83 languages examined by Barton and Vater, 170 words have been found the roots of which appear to be the same; three-fifths resemble the

*The facial similarities of the Mongolians and some American natives are so striking that I know of persons who mistook in my presence British Columbia Indians for Chinese.

+De linguis Americanis, Traject. 1708.

I do not

Mantchou, the Tongouse, the Mongul and the Samoyed."* speak of more recent and better known Americanists such as Gallatin, Humboldt, Schoolcraft, Gibbs and a host of others-without mentioning those who are still living-whose researches and judicious studies have illustrated American science. All of them concur in the opinion that the most infallible sign of the congenerousness of two Indian tribes is the similarity of their speech.

What Smith Barton did for the Iroquoian, Siouan, Muskogean and other languages may, I think, be repeated in favour of the Athabaskan or Déné idioms. Or indeed it may be that our own efforts will simply be the continuation of what he commenced himself; for I am not aware of the nature of all the dialects he examined. Be it as it may, his move being certainly a step in the right direction, I beg to enrol myself as one of his humble followers. I live in the midst of Indians who belong to an Aboriginal family roaming over thousands of miles in the North West of British America. In that immense expanse of country we find many congenerous tribes which cannot understand each other, and yet from the territory of the Loucheux of Northern Alaska to the plains. bordering on the Chilcotin river in Southern British Columbia, words. expressive of those primaries of Indian life such as beaver, bear, canoe, and of the objects of simplest import as water, fire, stone, etc., are singularly similar when not altogether identical.

This almost perfect homonymy has ever struck me as a circumstance of the utmost importance to the ethnologist. For if we are to discover in any corner of the globe races connected with our Dénés by direct or parallel descent from a common stock, it seems to me that it must be through the medium of these fixed, immutable and probably very ancient root words. And I dare hope that this assumption will bear the most rigid criticism. For were we to suppose for an instant that, owing to some impossible cataclysm, we are suddenly deprived of the least historical records relating to the civilized nations, how could we, for example, reconstitute the ethnological map of Europe otherwise than with the help of the roots of the languages spoken by its inhabitants? In like manner, had not the roots of the liturgical Coptic tongue been identical with the Egyptian of the Pharaohs of old, the key to those mysterious hieroglyphics which for centuries puzzled generations of savants would still be sought after. The basis for comparison failing,

no practical result could have been obtained.

Therefore, instead of presumptuously building up hasty theories before

*Al. von Humboldt, Views of the Cordilleras, Vol. I.

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