Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/690

Rh 664 E U L E U L inestimable value to the student of Italian linguistic. Ac cording to Concioli, they were discovered in 1444 amid the ruins of a theatre in the vicinity of Gubbio (the ancient Eugubium or Iguvium), and according to Passeri, they were bequeathed in 1456 by a private citizen to the public authorities of the town. Considerable doubt exists as to the original number of the tablets. Concioli asserts that nine were discovered, but that two were taken to Venice in 1540 and never brought back ; other early notices speak of eight, and even M. Breal is inclined to hope that the Venetian tablets may yet be recovered. The seven are preserved in the palazzo municipale of their native city, and much more truly than Dante s missal-painter Oderisi they form Uutior di Ewjultio. Taken altogether they furnish 447 lines, for the most part continuous and entire. Tables L, II., V., and VI. are engraved on both sides, but a considerable blank space is left on one side in the case of II. and V., and the back of VII. contains only a few lines. The inscriptions read from right to left ; those of V. and VII., and nearly all on the obverse of V., are in Roman letters ; the rest, which are pretty certainly of earlier date, are in Etruscan letters. According to M. Bre al, they may be ascribed to the first aud second century A.D. For three centuries after their discovery nothing was known as to the contents of the tables : Sal- masius confessed he could not even say whether they should be read from right to left or from left to right. The first attempt at divining their meaning was made by Bernardinus Baldus in the beginning of the 17th century, and he was followed by Adrian van Schrieck who believed he had got possession of the oldest monument of the Low German language, and interpreted accordingly. Olivieri recognized the name of Eugubium in one frequently recur ring word. Louis Bourget pointed out that one of the tablets written in the Etruscan letters corresponded in the main with two written in Roman letters. C. O. Miiller, in his great work Die Etrusken, showed that in spite of the use of Etruscan letters the language of the inscriptions was totally different from the Etruscan language. Lepsius added greatly to the epigraphical criticism of the tablets, and Lassen and Grotefend made several successful attempts at interpretation. And finally Aufrecht and Kirchhoff, summing up the labours of their predecessors, and working according to strict scientific method, brought the interpreta tion of the tables to a degree of perfection that could hardly have beeu hoped for, though there still remains in matters of detail sufficient scope for such investigators as Breal, Ebel, Corssen, Ascoli, Zeyss, Savelsberg, and Bugge. The tables contain the acts of a corporation of priests called the Attidian Brethren, who had authority over a considerable region, and probably derived their name from an ancient town Attidium, corresponding to the modern Attigio. The brethren were twelve in number, and acted under the presi dency of an adfertur. They offered sacrifices to a large number of gods and goddesses Jupiter, Sancus, Mars, Fisus, Grabovius, Cerfius, Vofiouus, Tefer, fcc., many of whom are altogether unknown to the classical student, and probably belonged to an indigenous Umbrian cult. Tables VI. and VII. give details of a purification of the Fisian Hill and a lustration of the people of Iguvium ; and table II. furnishes a list of the tribes who had a right to participate in a certain sacrifice. Literature .-Automo Concioli, Annot. in slatuta civ. Eugubii Macerate, 1673 ; Bernardinus Baldus, Divinatio in Tab. ancam Ltujub. lingua Ilctrusca vcleri perscriptam, 1613 ; Adrian von Sch deck, Van t JBcgkin der eerster Volcken van Europcn Ypres 1614; Philip Buonarroti in appendix to Dempster s DC Eiruria Jtcgah, 1/24; Bourguet, ISibliothequc Italiqueoullist. litt. de V Italic vol. iii,; A. Franciscus Gorius, Museum Etruscum, Florence. 1737 Olivieri, Saggio di Dissert, accad. di Cortona, 1742 ; Passeri Lett&e Rowsagliese, 1739, Contin. delle lett. Rone, in Angiola Calogerl s collection of scientific and philological works, vol. xxvi., Venice, 1742, and In Dempster i libros de Etruria Reg. Paralipomena, Lucca, 1767; Lan/i, Saggio di Lingua Etrusca, Rome, 1789; Lasseii, Seitragc zur Dcutung der EugubiniscJwn Tafcln, Bonn, 1833 ; Lepsius, Detabulis Eugubinis, Berlin, 1833 ; and Inscri})t. Umbriat ct Oscce, with folio atlas, Leipsic, 1841; Grotefend, Rudimenla lingua; Umbricce, 1835-6-7-8-9 ; C. Jannellis, Inscript. Oscce ct Tabb. Euijub. latino, interpret, tenlatce, Naples, 1841; Millingen in Trans, oftfie Hoy. Soc. of Lit., 1847 ; Aufrecht and Kirehhon, Die Umbr. Sprachdenkmuler, Berlin, 2 vols., 1849 and 1851 ; Panzerbieter, Qiicestiones Umbrica:, programm for the Gymnasium Bemhardinum at Meiningen, 1851 ; Francis W. Newman, The Text of the Jc/urine Inscriptions, with interl. Latin trans, and notes, London, 1864 ; Louis de Baeker, Les Tab. Eugubines, Paris, 1867 ; Ariodaute Fab- retti, Corpus inscrip. antiquioris ttvi et gloss, ital., Turin, 1867 ; Breal, Les Tables Eugubines, 1875, and his review of the history of the investigation, in ev. dcs D. Mondes, Nov. 1875 ; F. Biichelcr, Populi Igtivini Lustratio, Bonn, 1876. EULENSPIEGEL, in French Uh-spiegle, in older English Howleglas, one of the most popular of European chapbooks, consisting in all its innumerable rifacimentos of stories of ludicrous roguery, in which the love of fun is not unmingled with the love of mischief. The name in its present form is equivalent to Noctuse Speculum or Owl s Mirror, and may be compared with such appellations as Schvvabenspiege), Sachsenspiegel, Lalenspiegel, Speculum historiale, Speculum Conversions Peccatorum, Speculum de Passione Domini nostri Jesu Christ!, the Mirror of the World, the Mirror for Magistrates, the Steele Glas, and a hundred others of the same type. It may possibly have arisen early in the Middle Ages, and it is distinctly mentioned in a book De. Generibus Ebriosorum, or &quot;Concerning the kind.s of drunkards,&quot; published in 1515. No definitive explanation has been given of the origin of the name, but one inter pretation makes it rest on the fact that man recognizes his faults no more than an owl that looks into a mirror, and another finds the original form in the Low German Ul en Spiegel, or Ul dun Spiegel, which would signify &quot; Cleanse the looking glass.&quot; The popularity of the book has not only enriched literary German with the words Eulen- spieyelei, waggery, Eulenspitgdn, to play the wag, ic., but it has furnished French with espitiyle and espieglerie. Ben Jonson refers in his Masque of Fortune and his Sad Shepherd to Owl-glass, Ulenspiegle, and Owlspiegle, and Taylor makes a peculiar use of the word when he says &quot; Ride on my best invention like an asse To the amazement of each Owliglasse.&quot; According to an old tradition, the tricks and jests of the collection are attributed to a certain Till or Tyll Eulen- spiegel, otherwise Till the Saxon or Tylus Saxonicus, who was born at Kneitlingen near Schoppenstadt, in the duchy of Brunswick, and was the son of Claus Eulenspiegel and Anna Wortbeck. He is usually stated to have been buried in 1350 at Molln, about four leagues from Lubeck, but the people of Darnme in Belgium claim that his grave is with them. At Molln, to quote an old book of travels cited by Nares, the townsmen &quot;yearly keep a feast for his memory, and yet show the apparell he was wont to wear ; &quot; and his tomb was adorned with a fantastic effigy, holding in one hand a little tankard with a jack-in-a-box, and in the other a basket full of little manuikins with fool s caps on their heads. That there was such a person as Tyl seems not improbable, but what connexion he had with the Owl- glass it is hard to discover ; Eulenspiegel at least* is pretty certainly a later addition to his name. Mr William F. Thorns found the Irish peasantry telling stories of Old Espeel, and a writer in the Gentleman s Magazine, Septem ber 1877, Mr David Fitzgerald, &quot;met with pretty clear traces of Eulenspiegel in the traditions of the county of Limerick, where he figures as one Ulas, whose confession, like that of his prototype, is yet a favourite tale.&quot; The book was originally, it would appear, composed in Low German ; and, according to Lappenberg, the High German version