dubio ex Gothorum prosapia ducunt originem: sed quia, ut dixi, Gepanta pigrum aliquid tardumque signat, pro gratuito convitio Gepidarum nomen exortum est, quod nec ipsum; credo falsissimum. Sunt enim tardioris ingenii, graviores corporum velocitate. Hi ergo Gepida tacti invidia, dudum spreta provincia, commanebant in insula Visclæ amnis vadis circumacta, quam pro patrio sermone dicebant Gepidos. Nunc eam, ut fertur, insulam gens Vividaria incolit, ipsis ad meliores terras meantibus. Qui Vividarii ex diversis nationibus acsi in unum asylum collecti sunt, et gentem fecisse noscuntur."

I submit that this account is anything but historical. Be it so. It may, however, be the expression of a real Gothic affinity on the part of the Gepids, though wrong in its details. Even this is doubtful. That it may indicate a political alliance, that it may indicate a partial assumption of a Gothic nationality, I, by no means, deny. I only deny that it vitiates the doctrine that Japydes and Gepida are, according to the common-sense interpretation of them, the same word.

The present is no place for exhibiting in full the reasons for considering Jornandes to be a very worthless writer, a writer whose legends (if we may call them so) concerning the Goths, are only Gothic in the way that the fables of Geoffrey of Monmouth are English, i. e. tales belonging to a country which the Goths took possession of, rather than tales concerning the invaders themselves; i. e. not Gothic at all.

It is suggested then, that the statements of Procopius and Jornandes being ignored, the common-sense interpretation of the geographical and etymological relations of the Iapodes and Gepida-word for word, and place for place-be allowed to take its course; the Gepida being looked upon as Illyrians, whatever may be the import of that word; occupants, at least, of the country of the Iapodes, and probably their descendants.

Thus far the criticism of the present paper goes towards separating the Gepidæ from the stock with which they are generally connected, viz. the German,-also from any emigrants from the parts north of the Danube, e.g. Poland,

Prussia, Scandinavia, and the like. So far from doing anything of this kind, it makes them indigenous to the parts to the north-east of the head of the Adriatic. As such, what were they? Strabo makes them a mixed nation-Kelt and Illyrian.

What is Illyrian? Either Albanian or Slavonic; it being Illyria where the populations represented by the Dalmatians of Dalmatia, come in contact with the populations represented by the Skipetar of Albania.

The remaining object of the present paper is to raise two fresh questions:

1. The first connects itself with the early history of Italy, and asks how far migrations from the eastern side of the Adriatic may have modified the original population of Italy. Something-perhaps much-in this way is suggested by Niebuhr; suggested, if not absolutely stated. The Chaonian name, as well as other geographical and ethnological relations, is shown to be common to both sides of the Gulf. Can the class of facts indicated hereby be enlarged? The name, which is, perhaps, the most important, is that of the Galabri. These are, writes Strabo, a "people of the Dardaniatæ, in whose land is an ancient city" (p. 316). Word for word this is Calabri-whatever the geographical and ethnological relations may be. Without being exactly Iapodes, these Calabri are in the Iapod neighbourhood.

Without being identical, the name of the Italian Iapyges (which was to all intents and purposes another name for Calabri) is closely akin to Iapodes; so that, in Italy, we have Calabri called also Iapyges, and, in Illyria, Iapodes near a population called Galabri.

More than this, Niebuhr (see Dict. of Greek and Roman Geography, v. Iapygia) suggests that Apulia may be Iapygia, word for word. The writer of the article just quoted demurs to this. At the same time the change from 7 to d is, at the present moment, a South Italian characteristic. The Sicilian for bello was beddo. On the other hand, this is a change in the wrong direction; still it is a change of the kind required. The evidence that there was a foreign population in Calabria

is satisfactory-the most definite fact being the statement that the Sallentines were partly Cretans, associated with Locrians and Illyrians. (See Calabria.)

Again, this is the district wherein the legends concerning Diomed prevailed,-also the district of the Daunii, whom Festus (v. Daunia) connects with Illyria.

I suggest that, if the Calabri were Galabri, the Iapyges were Iapodes. Without enlarging upon the views that the definite recognition of Illyrian elements in Southern Italy suggests, we proceed to the next division of our subject.

2. Is there any connexion between the names Iapod-es and Iapet-us? The answer to this is to be found in the exposition of the criticism requisite for such problems. Special evidence there is none.

The first doctrine that presents itself to either the ethnologist or the historian of fiction, in connexion with the name Iapetus, is that it is the name of some eponymus—a name like Hellen, or Æolus, Ion, or Dorus. But this is opposed by the fact that no nation of any great historical prominence bears such a designation. Doubtless, if the Thracians, the Indians, the Egyptians, &c. had been named Iapeti, the doctrine in question would have taken firm root, and that at once. But such is not the case.

May it not, however, have been borne by an obscure population? The name Greek was so born. So, at first, was the name Hellen. So, probably, the names to which we owe the wide and comprehensive terms Europe, Asia, Africa, and others. Admit then that it may have belonged to an obscure population;-next, admitting this, what name so like as that of the Iapodes? Of all known names (unless an exception be made in favour of the -gypt in E-gypt) it must be this or No other has any resemblance at all.

none.

Who were on the confines of the non-Hellenic area? Iapyges on the west; Iapodes on the north-west. The suggested area was not beyond the limits of the Greek mythos. It was the area of the tales about Diomed. It was the area of the tales about Antenor. It was but a little to the north of the land of the Lapitha, whose name, in its latter two

thirds, is I-apod. It ran in the direction of Orphic and Bacchic Thrace to the north. It ran in the direction of Cyclopæan and Lestrygonian Sicily to the west. It was on the borders of that terra incognita which so often supplies eponymi to unknown and mysterious generations.

Say that this suggestion prove true, and we have the first of the term Iapodes in Homer and Hesiod, the last in the German genealogies and geographies of Jornandes, and the Traveller's Song-unless, indeed, the modern name Schabacz be Gepid. In the Traveller's Song we get the word in a German form, Gifpe or Gifpas. They are mentioned in conjunction with the Wends.

In Jornandes we get Gapt as the head of the Gothic genealogies :—Horum ergo (ut ipsi suis fabulis ferunt) primus fuit Gapt, qui genuit Halmal; Halmal vero genuit Augis, &c. Now Gapt here may stand for the eponymus of the Gepida, or it may stand for Japhet, the son of Noah. More than one of the old German pedigrees begins with what is called a Gothic legend, and ends with the book of Genesis.

To conclude: the bearing of the criticism upon the ethnology of the populations which took part in the destruction of the Roman empire, is suggestive. There are several of them in the same category with the Gepidæ.

Mutatis mutandis: every point in the previous criticism, which applies to the Gepida and Iapydes, applies to the Rugi and Rhæti. Up to a certain period we have, in writers more or less classical, notices of a country called Rhætia, and a population called Rhæti. For a shorter period subsequent to this, we hear nothing, or next to nothing, of any one.

Thirdly, in the writers of the 5th and 6th centuries, when the creed begins to be Christian and the authorities German, we find the Rugi of a Rugi-land,-Rugi-land, or the land of the Rugi, being neither more nor less than the ancient province of Rhætia.

Name, then, for name, and place for place, the agreement is sufficiently close to engender the expectation that the Rhæti will be treated as the Rugi, under a classical,-the Rugi as the Rhæti, under a German, designation. Yet this is not the

case. And why? Because when the Rugi become prominent in history, it is the recent, foreign, and intrusive Goths and Huns with whom they are chiefly associated. Add to this, that there existed in Northern Germany a population actually called Rugii.

For all this, however, Rugiland is Rhætia, and Rhætia is Rugiland,—name for name and place for place. So, probably, is the modern Slavonic term Raczy.

REC

U

EST

II.—ON THE FRENCH SOFT G OR J, AS REPRESENTING THE LATIN LABIALS, WITH OR WITHOUT AN ATTENDANT VOWEL. Br J. MALCOLM LUDLOW, ESQ.

[Read January the 15th and February the 5th.]

"For bia would readily pass into ge, as in rabies, rage; Vidubia (not Vidugia with D'Auville), Vouge; rubea, rouge; Dibio, Dijon; gobio, goujon."-Prof. Key, Philolog. Soc. Trans. 1854, p. 209.

The mutation of which Mr. Key speaks is one that had long ago struck me; but it is so curious in itself, and bears upon so many English words, that the following list of instances,still, I should think, incomplete,-in which the labials generally are, or seem to be, represented by the French g, may not be unacceptable. I have prefixed (D.) where the derivation is indicated in Diez; a few other of the cases mentioned have already been instanced in Mr. Key's alphabet.

G for B:

Mr. Key, in the passage above quoted, has pointed out most of these, rage, Vouge, rouge, Dijon, goujon ;-besides connecting, a little higher up, frange and fringe with fimbria. To these the following must be added :

(D.) Changer, change, échanger, échange; archaic, changier, chambgier, eschambgier, &c.; Engl. change, exchange. From cambire; whence in law-Latin excambium, Scotch excambion; Ital. cambiar, cangiar, Sp. Port. cambiar.

(D.) Courge,-also gourde, our gourd, the two being con