Page:The Compleat Linguist 1719-08 Issue One - A Grammar of Spanish.djvu/9

Rh Cervantes, in his Don Quixot, have taken the Name of Romances.

But in truth, the first Maternal Tongue of Country is the Biscayan, or the  old Cantabrian. The Biscayners are the only true Original Spaniards, as the  Welsh are the truest Remains of our ancient Britons. Biscay was never compleatly conquer’d either by the Romans, Goths or Moors: And it is remarkable, That when any of that Country is to be made a Knight, there is no Enquiry into his Descent, or whether he be clear of Moorish Blood; which is us’d with others.

The Biscayan Tongue was spoken likewise in Navarre; and is esteem’d to take its Rise from the Chaldean.

Another main Dialect of this Tongue is spoken in the Kingdom of Granada, and Part of Andalusia, Valencia, and Arragon; mostly Arabick; now almost worn out, except the Utterrance of some  Letters still retain’d; as ç, g, j, x, z. Rh