JACOB GRIMM'S HISTORY Or TUE GERMAN LANGUAGE.
TERRE is something almost affecting in the concluding paragraph of Jacob Grimm's preface, coming from so distinguished an investigator into Northern languages and mythology—from one whose name is almost identified with a large and important branch of literature.
" I am writing,' he says, " with an inward pleasure which is undi- miniahed ; but I am quite alone, and hear neither praise nor blame from those who, standing nearest to me, could pass the safest judgment upon me. Is not this a threatening sign of a stagnation, or even a decrease, in those investigations which were once cheerfully pursued in common, and for which, as it seemed, no end was to be anticipated P" The explanation of this decreased zeal in the study of antiquity, in a land where, above all others, critical inquiry into the past seems most at home, is no doubt to be attributed to the political commotions of the time, whiclr invest the present with an exclusive and absorbing interest. The preface is addressed to Gervinus ; and it is just possible that something like a gentle reproach is intended for that professor, who has lately aban- doned the field of national literature for the arena of national politics.
The title of the book, as will be supposed by all who are acquainted with the character of Jacob Grimm's researches, gives by no means an adequate notion of the contents. Jacob Grimm is anything but a dry philologist, whose mind dwells solely in the region of words. The learning with which he has brought together the stores of so many lan- guages, is less admirable than the geniality with which he can discern the affinities and real life of the various nations, amid their intricacies of sound and symbol. He brings to his philological researches a broad knowledge of humanity, and an expansive sympathy also ; and the effect is sometimes almost startling when amid a mass of comparative tables arise little sketches of life and custom, which charm by their aptness and their brevity. In this spirit, the richness of certain languages, in words which have a reference to the minuthe of brute existence, is brought into strong connexion with the habits of a nomadic people, while another sort of copiousness illustrates the agricultural life. The venerable philologist, affirming that language is a more living witness of nations than their bones, weapons, and graves, keeps in view this ultimate use of philology during his most minute researches ; and thus a glow of life is diffused over a work which would otherwise be little else than a mass of tabular dryness, useful for reference, but impossible to read.
Jacob Grimm seems chiefly to have been led to the compilation of this his last work by the desire of showing that the Getse and Declaim of the ancients are a Germanic race, in opposition to a prevalent opinion that Germans and Getm are totally independent of each other. This point ex- pands into an examination of all those Northern races considered bar- barons by the Romans ; and affinities, chiefly of language, are traced even between nations that at first sight seemed as remote as possible from each other. Thus, the book which is nominally a history of the German lan- guage is really an ethnological sketch of Northern Europe.
The European races enumerated by Jacob Grimm are ten in number. The Greeks and the Romans, whose languages stand to each other in the relation of sisterhood, not in that of parent and child, hold the first places by honour if not by antiquity. The Celts or Gauls, whose culminat- ing period of glory lies in the sixth, fifth, and fourth centuries before Christ, and therefore precedes that of the Romans, form the third race ; which, after holding districts of Germany, Upper Italy, and Spain, is forced to shrink before the Romans on one side and the Germans on the other, till the only place of refuge is the extreme coast and the British islands. The Welsh and Irish languages, related to each other, but exhibiting important differences, are the records of this stock and its fate ; and so perhaps is the language of the French Bretons. Jacob Grimm, on the ground that migration does not generally take a retrograde course, is inclined to believe that the Bretons are the remains of the ancient inhabitants of the continent rather than the result of a backward movement from the islands. The Germans are the fourth race; and Grimm believes that for ages there was a close intimacy be- tween them and the Gauls, which can alone explain the fact that Ger- man usages and words found their way to the Romans before these were brought into immediate contact with the Germans. Of the fifth race, the Lithuanians, history records scarcely anything ; but they have left valuable monuments in their language. It is one of the six tongues, the affinities of which form the subject of Professor Bopp's Comparative Grammar. The race never seems to have had any influence on the great events of the world, but always to have succumbed to more powerful neighbours. The language is divided into three large branches,—the old Prussian, which is lost; the Lithuanian par excellence, which exists in East Prussia, where it is comparatively pure, and in Samogitia, where it is mingled with Polish words ; and the Lettish, which is to be found in Conrland and Livonia. No language in Europe is closer to the Sanscrit than the Lithuanian : it also forma a connecting link between the Ger- man and the Sclavonic tongues ; the latter of which is the sixth in Grimm's list. The seventh is the Finnish, the record of a most ancient and powerful race, which probably entered Europe before the Celts, and was pushed Northwards by Celts, Germans, and Sclavonians. In the extreme North of Europe the Finnish relics are chiefly to be found, with great differences between the different branches; but the language of the Magyars still gives the old stock a Southern habitation. The last three races on the list are the Iberian, the Thracian, and the Scythian; of which the first has left the Basque as its sole monument.
Grimm concludes his survey of the races and their migrations, with the observation that the movement along the coast seems to be faster than through the inland country. The following extract, which refers to the nomadic state, will give a notion of Grimm's descriptive manner. "The world is open to the brave: they leave their home, which is become too narrow, impelled by hunger and scarcity, the hostility of races, or the love of travel and adventure. Chance and the council of the gods conduct them; birds.
fly before, a hind shows them the ford across the stream, a bear or a wolf indi- cates the path through wood and mountain. They travel with wives children, relations, and friends; and revere above everything the bonds of brotherhood and
the laws of hospitality. •
"The possessions of these wandering people are their cart and cattle, their weapons and ornaments. By the Greeks they were called clp.acipLot; and a rich man would possess ten gold vessels and eighty carts, each with accommodation for four (cip.aEar Te-rpaxXivour); while a poor man, who had neither cart nor hinds, would be rich in relatives.
"Horses, oxen, sheep, and dogs, are the cattle of the herdsmen and hunters. The dog protects the herd and the cart; and his fidelity survives the death of his master—canes defenders Cimbris wens domus eons:a plaustris impositas. By the fallen hero his dog is still lying, his horse stands mournfully nodding over him; for be has often called both by name, and a dialogue was maintained be- tween horse and rider. A larger but less intimate troop of oxen and sheep comes afterwards.
" The sword also is named and accosted. It is the man's greatest jewel, winch is only transferred to his immediate male heir; while female possessions consist of ornaments and rings. The whole distinction between hergewate' and ' gerade '• was to be traced to sacred notions of pastoral life. The man now lays aside his sword, but on every occasion the pastoral people appear armed as Tacitus has ob- served in the Germans: nihil autem neque publicre neque privatre rei nisi armati agunt. The sword and spear were, in the eyes of the warriors, august beings, on which they made solemn oaths, and which they revered as divine signs. Of all gods the god of the sword or of the hammer, whose car rolls thundering through the air, was nearest to them. To him fall bloody sacrifices especially of horses. How could their god be thrust between walls, while they themselves did not live in fixed dwellings?
"The whole action of this people is a free life in the woods, divided into marches, pasture, and war. Fighting, which they eagerly seek, leads them to booty like hunting; and the chace and the battle are their delight. ' Weida ' in our old language signifies not only partici' but venatio ' and ' piscatio'; weidman ' the shepherd and the hunter; and to the present day the Alpine shepherd is the boldest hunter of the chamois. In the knights-errant who go through the world thirating for combat and victory, we have stall a tinges of the nomadic life. • • *
"Among such a people, who passed days midyears in a state of excitement, but stall calm, amid their pleasant pastures, or protected by the cover of a narrow cart, and who watched the secrets of nature, a faith in an intercourse with animals necessarily struck root; and the animal-fable began, which is continued in later times. Even the adoption of the names of courageous animals as names of men, the representation of them on shield and helmet., and the reference to animals in many names of herbs, seems to me to have this origin. The language of the no- madic tribes is very copious in expressions for weapons and cattle-breeding in every situation, which afterwards seem cumbrous or superfluous to people in a cultivated state."
There is nothing particularly new in the above, but it is a specimen of the genial spirit with which the venerable philologist sets about his la. borious researches. The body of the work consists of details, which can Only be appreciated by a close study of each several point.
• Of these two old words, the former signifies the warlike accoutrements, which descend to the son, the latter the household ftirniture, which goes to the wife, on the death of the possessor.
Previous page
