Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/632

616 Pyrenees; but it must be confessed that no direct proof of its existence can be found to-day, guide books to the contrary notwithstanding. The domestic institutions are remarkably primitive and well preserved. Every man's house is indeed his castle. As Herbert puts it in his Review of the Political State of the Basque Provinces, speaking of Vizcaya: "No magistrate can violate that sanctuary; no execution can be put into it, nor can arms or horse be seized; he can not be arrested for debt or subjected to imprisonment without a previous summons to appear under the old oak of Guernica." The ties of blood are persistently upheld among all the Basques. The women enjoy equal rights before the law in many places. Customs vary from place to place, to be sure, and primitive characteristics are not always confined to the Basques alone. They are, however, well represented, on the whole. In some places the eldest daughter takes precedence over all the sons in inheritance, a possible relic of the matriarchal family which has disappeared elsewhere in Europe. It would be out of place to enlarge upon these social peculiarities in this place. It will be enough in passing to mention the once noted mystery plays, the folklore, the dances, the week consisting of but three days (as Webster asserts), and a host of other facts, each capable of inviting attention from the ethnological point of view. The only detail which it will repay us to elaborate is the language. To that we turn for a moment.

To the ordinary observer many peculiarities in the Basque language are at once apparent; x, y, and z seem to be unduly prominent—to play leading parts, in fact. There are more consonants alone, to say nothing of the vowels and double characters, than there are letters in our entire alphabet. For the linguist the differences from the European languages are of profound significance. The Basque conforms in its structure to but two other languages in all Europe, each of which is akin to the linguistic families of Asia and aboriginal America. It is formally like the Magyar or Hungarian; but this we know to be an immigrant from the East within historic times. It is also fashioned after the model of the speech of the Finns in Russia. These people are likewise quite foreign to western Europe; they are akin to tribes which connect them with the Asiatic hordes. The Basque alone of the trio is mysterious as to its origin; for it constitutes a linguistic island, surrounded completely by the normal population and languages of Europe.

In place of inflection, the Basque makes use largely of the