Page:The International Folk-Lore Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, July, 1893.djvu/128

92 In general there is no agreement among linguists on this head.

In all disquisitions hitherto, the Slav names have been but slightly and superficially noted. They either were not taken account of, or were considered as younger and even as the youngest. Even the distinguished Miklosich derives them from the Latin humulus. Other linguists are more circumspect. Matzenauer and Buditovich abstain from giving an opinion in the matter, Fick gives no explanation at all, and Victor Hehn, profoundest in this question, makes the reflection that the Slav forms may be as well derived from the Central European ones as the latter from the former.

It is therefore clear that western science does not furnish evidence sufficient to settle the question, and I shall try to sift the matter independently.

As there is no mention of hop in the West before the 9th century, as the admixture thereof to beer begins on the sudden, and soon spreads so widely that governments consider it expedient to levy duties upon the article, we may conclude that the plant became known very recently. Of this we find undoubted mention made in medieval writers. Bishop John of Liege, for instance, complains to Charles IV. of his income from the malt-tax being lessened by the introduction of hops. "In consequence of a new plant," says he, "called humulus or hoppa, being mixed with beer, the same quantity of malt is no longer used." The complaint had a good result, and the Emperor, in the year 1364, permitted one grossus to be levied per barrel of beer with hops. Pope Gregory confirmed this privilege later on to Bishop Arnold of Trèves. Some countries, the Netherlands for instance, begin to add hops to beer only in the lith and 15th centuries; it is introduced into England and Sweden only in the 16th, while the Dukes of Bohemia levy a duty on hops in the 11th century, and many localities in Poland and Podalia even before the 11th century take their names from the hop gardens. Why should people have waited several centuries in the more enlightened countries without using a plant for admixture to beer if they knew it? Why did the wise bishop of the 14th century call it a new plant? This is evidently a riddle, and if we look for the native country beyond the frontiers of central and southern