Page:The International Folk-Lore Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, July, 1893.djvu/129

 Rh Europe, the question arises, which country could furnish it to the Germans? Evidently only the east.

Consequently, we must investigate first of all, the age of the Slav names of the hop. Their great similarity strikes us at once. Common to them all is one and the same root, consisting of the consonants h., m., l.; m remains invariable. We find in Polish, Kussian, Ruthenian, Bulgarian, Old Slavonic, Bohemian, Serbian: chmiel or chmil; in Lusatian: khimjel; the other Southern Slav forms are: hmeiji, hmel, hmelina, melji, melika. The occurrence of the same word with very slight changes in the whole Slav family may prove one of two things: either the great age of the word, dating from a time when the whole people spoke one language, or that the word was borrowed in late times from another race. In order to arrive at the conclusion which of the two cases is true, we shall turn to the Polish linguistic documents. Oar herbariums and dictionaries of the 16th century have the word. It is not wanting in much older manuscripts. "Written documents, quoting geographical names owing their origin to our plant, take us yet a step farther back. For instance: Chmielno, chmielnik, chmielnihi, chmielow, chmielowice, chmielowka, chmilno, chmiel. Chmielno, a village in Kassoubia, is mentioned in documents of 1335. Chmielnik, in the district of Hopnica, is memorable by a battle with the Tartars, 1241. Chmielnik, on the Boh, is said to be one of the oldest towns in Podolia. Chmielnik, chmielrko (Bohemian chmel nice, Lausatian Khmelnieza) means a garden or field where hops is reared. And the aforesaid appellations of localities either owe their names to hop gardens or to the names of their proprietors: Chmiekwski, Chmielnicki, Chmiel, who evidently derived them from the hops. In both cases the source of the names, belonging to the beginning of the 13th century, remounts to the end of the 11th.

It will not be amiss also to mention that Alherki, an Arabian writer of the 10th century, relates that the Slavs used hops to make their hydromel.

Considering the scarcity of ancient Slav documents it