Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 73.djvu/518

514 another, even though it be in close ties of friendship; whilst there is still less tendency when national hostility intervenes. Secondly, the adoption of the language of the conqueror by the conquered, except under the most favorable circumstances, is not common, and only takes place by a very gradual process, as is seen in the case of Ireland. Thirdly, there is a strong tendency for the conqueror to adopt the language of the conquered, as was done by the Normans in England, In Ireland, in Sicily and in Italy; by the Cromwellian settlers in Tipperary, by the Bulgari in Bulgaria, by the Franks in Gaul, by the Lombards in Italy and by the Visigoths in Spain. There is thus an inevitable tendency for the children to speak their mothers' tongue, and indeed the phrase "mother-tongue" is based on the fact observed through long ages that the child learns its first words from its mother and thus takes after her in speech. This law, which still holds good in modern days and in civilized communities, must have been far stronger in earlier times in countries where the tie of marriage hardly existed and the child belonged to its mother's and not its father's tribe, as is still the case in many parts of the world.

In view of these facts we can not accept Sir John Rhys's hypothesis that when a few bodies of invaders, whom he terms Celticans, passed into Ireland the indigenous supposed non-Aryan race within two centuries completely abandoned its own language, taking over in its entirety the Aryan tense system as well as the Aryan vocabulary of its conquerors.

Now let us turn to Greece, Italy and Spain. It is admitted that neither Arcadia nor Attica was ever conquered by Acheans or Dorians, yet in both these areas the Greek language existed through all historical time, and in Attica especially the Aryan tense system is found in its highest perfection. The dialect of Arcadia can not have been taken over from Acheans or Dorians, because it is the same as that of the Cypriotes from Arcadia who settled in Cyprus at least 1100 B.C. It is also very close to the dialect of Pelasgiotis in Thessaly, the home of the aboriginal Pelasgian population, whilst it comes closest of all Greek dialects to that of the ancient Epic. There can, therefore, be no doubt that Arcadian is no mere bastard lingo, half non-Aryan, half Aryan, but is the genuine speech of the oldest and most unmixed population of Greece, who were undoubtedly a melanochrous race, and who also most certainly had occupied Greece from the Stone age.

The Ligurians, who formed from the Stone age the bottom stratum in all upper and central Italy, are now admitted to have spoken an Aryan language, and I have recently given some reasons for believing that the Latin language is simply the native tongue of the aboriginal Ligurian population of Latium with some admixtures derived from the Italic tribes of Siculi and Sabines. I have also shown that the ancient