Lithuanian

“ Thus dreaming and finishing his evening prayer, gradually the last court apparitor in Lithuania fell asleep.
Such were the amusements and disputes of those days in the quiet Lithuanian village, while the rest of the world was swimming in tears and blood, and while that man, the god of war, surrounded by a cloud of regiments, armed with a thousand cannon, harnessing to his chariot golden eagles beside those of silver,32 was flying from the deserts of Libya to the lofty Alps, casting thunderbolt on thunderbolt, at the Pyramids, at Tabor, Marengo, Ulm, and Austerlitz. ”

“ With inexpressible apprehension all the Lithuanian folk gazed each night at this heavenly marvel, foreboding ill from it, and likewise from other signs: for too often they heard the cries of ill-omened birds, which, gathering in throngs on empty fields, sharpened their beaks as if awaiting corpses. Too often they noticed that the dogs rooted up the earth, and, as if scenting death, howled piercingly, which was an omen of famine or of war. ”

“ I would not dare to undertake to describe to you the spirit of patriotism of the Lithuanians in their native land, for I am a Lithuanian, and some may say that it is quite natural to praise one's own. ”

“ Accordingly the vocabulary of Lithuanian betrays Polish, that of Lettish, German influence. Lettish has also been influenced by the proximity of its neighbours of Finnish race, whom the Letts gradually propelled northwards into the extreme northern corner of the promontory of Kurland, where a portion of them still remains, and into Livonia proper. Lithuanian has also been much influenced by White Russian, the dialect current in those provinces which in the Middle Ages formed the lands of the Lithuanian crown, and later with Lithuania became part of Poland. ”

“ VARLAAM. With what God sends, little hostess. Have you no wine? HOSTESS. As if I had not, my fathers! I will bring it at once. (Exit.) MISSAIL. Why so glum, comrade? Here is that very Lithuanian frontier which you so wished to reach. ”

“ The brightest period of Lithuanian [pg iv] history occurs in the time of Olgierd and Witold, whose rule extended from the Baltic to the Black Sea. But this monstrous empire, having sprung up too quickly, could not create in itself internal strength, to unite and invigorate its differing portions. The Lithuanian nationality, spread over too large a surface of territory, lost its proper character. The Litwini subjugated many Russian tribes, and entered into political relations with Poland. ”

“ The principal characteristic of any nation is the language of that nation. If the native language is forbidden to any nation by those becoming its conquerors, the nation is exterminated.
All the enemies of Lithuania seem to be very anxious to deprive the people of their language, for as soon as they take possession of some of the Lithuanian cities or towns, the first step they take is to forbid the children to be taught the Lithuanian language. ”

“ Behind this natural barrier Lithuanian nationality was born in the middle of the thirteenth century under the leadership of Mindvog, an energetic chieftain who insured his [105] own supremacy by causing the leaders of rival clans to be put to death. With the help of the Poles the Lithuanians eventually checked the easterly expansion of the Teutons.
The region occupied by Lithuanians in former times can be traced today by the distribution of the type of dwelling peculiar to this people. The ancient area exceeds the borders of the present linguistic zone. ”

“ The next morning I was fortunate indeed to say mass for the first time in the church in which I was baptized. That afternoon at a meeting of the Lithuanian Sales Corporation, I lectured on American Lithuanians and Americans in general. Monday I went to Kaunas, or Kovno, to meet the [Pg 10] [A] President of Lithuania, Anthony Smetona, to extend to him the congratulations of the Lithuanian Total Abstinance Organization of America. ”

“ It is well known that Lithuanian is, of all European languages, the one most similar to the Indo-Iranian group. For the etymology of the Lithuanian word dainà, probably cognate with Vedic Sanskrit dhénā, see S. G. Oliphant, in Journal of the American Oriental Society, xxxii. 393–413 (1912) . The writer is collecting the material on Baltic religion with a view to discussing it, in its presentational and comparative aspects, in a separate volume. ”

“ AUTHOR'S PREFACE The Lithuanian nation, formed out of the tribes of the Litwini, Prussians and Leti, not very numerous, settled in an inextensive country, not very fertile, long unknown to Europe, was called, about the thirteenth century, by the incursions of its neighbours, to a more active part. ”

“ Vitold himself, though called Grand Prince, rules Lithuania by appointment of Yagello, and is merely viceroy. His merit, therefore, will fall on the king. And what glory for newly baptized Lithuania, and for Polish power, if their united armies shall carry the Cross to regions in which if the name of the Saviour has ever been mentioned, it was only to be blasphemed, regions in which the foot of a Pole or Lithuanian has never stood up to this time! ”

“ Lithuania.♦ Of this family were the tribes of Curland in their own peninsula, of Samigola or Semigallia, the Samaites of Samogitia to the south, the proper Lithuanians south of them, the Jatwages, Jatwingi—in many spellings—forming a Lithuanian wedge between the Slavonic lands of Mazovia and Black Russia. ♦Prussia.♦ The Lithuanians, strictly so called, reached the coast just north of the Niemen; from the mouth of the Niemen to the mouth of the Vistula the coast was held by the Prussians. Of these nations, Aryan and non-Aryan, the Lithuanians alone founded a national dominion in historic times. ”

“ When the first translation of the Holy Scriptures into the Lithuanian language appeared in London, I published in the Scientific and Literary Gazette of Kœnigsberg, an article wherein, while rendering full justice to the efforts of the learned interpreter and to the pious motives of the Bible Society, I pointed out several slight errors, and showed, moreover, that this version could only be useful to one portion of the Lithuanian people. ”

“ The swiftness of my Lithuanian enabled me to be foremost in the pursuit; and seeing the enemy fairly flying through the opposite gate, I thought it would be prudent to stop in the market-place, to order the men to rendezvous. I stopped, gentlemen; but judge of my astonishment when in this market-place I saw not one of my hussars about me! Are they scouring the other streets? or what is become of them? They could not be far off, and must, at all events, soon join me. In that expectation I walked my panting Lithuanian to a spring in this market-place, and let him drink. ”

“ Set in the Lithuanian country is Vilna, the station on the one reasonably dry entry from the west into Central Russia, and therefore a trading town with large German, Jewish, and Polish elements illustrating more tragically {77} than any other town the difficulty of creation of states in this eastern boundary zone of Western Europe. The forests of Lithuania are very important for the country's economic future. ”

“ The grammar, it is to be said, is far more like that of the Greek than like that of the Latin language.
[C] There is a language, the Lithuanian, spoken by a Leth-Slavonic people, northwest of the Baltic, near Poland, which has preserved in a remarkable and unique manner forms of the old Aryan speech which are extinct in other European tongues. ”

“ As to the Lithuanian, it has, of course, its closest affinities with the Slavonic tongues of Russia, Bohemia, Poland, and Servia, since the Slavonic and Lithuanic are two branches of the same Sarmatian stock. But when we go beyond the Sarmatian stock, and bring into the field of comparison the other tongues of Europe, the Latin, the Greek, the German, and the Keltic, we find that, though the Lithuanic is more or less clearly connected with all of them, it is, beyond comparison, far liker the old Indian or Sanskrit. ”

“ No language of modern Europe presents the flexional type in a purer shape than Lithuanian, where we find preserved nearly the same grammatical system as in old Sanskrit, yet no one would assert that the culture of Lithuanian peasants is higher than that of Shakespeare, whose language has lost an enormous amount of the old flexions. ”

“ If to the pure and unspoiled influence of his home Kościuszko owes something at least of the moral rectitude and devotion to duty from which he never swerved, the country life of Lithuania, with its freedom and its strange charm, the life that he loved above all others, has probably a good deal to say to the simplicity of nature and the straightness of outlook that are such strongly marked characteristics in this son of the Lithuanian forests. ”

“ Along the Baltic from the Vistula to the Niemen lived the Prussians, a division of the Lithuanian stock. The Lithuanians are not exactly Slavs, but they are much nearer to the Slavs than to any other people, and are among the most interesting members of the great Aryan race. ”

“ In Neo-Sanskrit speaking Lithuania there abound star-legends which differ from the southern tales of the same order, by reason of the pagan good faith that clings to them, The Italian is aware that 42 he is romancing when he speaks of the moon travelling through the night to meet the morning star, or when he describes her anger at the loss of one of her stars; the Lithuanian has a suspicion that there may be a good deal of truth in his poets' account of the sun's domestic arrangements—how the morning star lights the fire for him to get up by, and the evening star makes his bed. ”

“ When the Germans occupied Lithuania they did not treat them as roughly as the Poles are doing at this moment. For example, I was in Lithuania when the Poles took Seinai, the seat of Bishop Karosas, which is a Lithuanian city, imprisoned the Lithuanian Bishop in his residence, expelled the ecclesiastical students from their seminary, arrested two priests and carried them to Poland. If any of the remaining priests are called out on a sick call, they send armed soldiers to accompany the priest and guard his movements strictly. ”

“ Two-thirds of the grand duchy consisted of old Russian lands inhabited by men who spoke the Ruthenian language and professed the Orthodox Greek religion, While in the north were the Lithuanians proper, semi-savage and semi-catholic, justly proud of their heroic forefathers of the house of Gedymin, and very sensitive of the pretensions of Poland to the provinces of Volhynia and Podolia, the fruits of Lithuanian valour. A Lithuanian himself, Casimir strenuously resisted the attempts of Poland to wrest these provinces from the grand duchy. ”

“ After repulsing the Bolshevik from the Dvinsk, they had a few weeks' rest and then marched to Kaunas.
At the time I was visiting Lithuania she was surrounded by enemies—on the north and east by the Bolsheviks, on the west by Kolchak and the insurgent Germans, and on the south by the Poles. The most stupendous fact is that at present the Poles are the most dangerous foes of the Lithuanians. The Poles, rejoicing in their own liberation from the yoke of oppression, are altogether unmindful that they are striving to place the Lithuanian nation under worse oppression. ”

“ Language and Literature.—The Lithuanian, Lettic or Lettish and Borussian or Old Prussian languages together constitute a distinct linguistic subdivision, commonly called the Baltic subdivision, within the Indo-European family. They have many affinities to the Slavonic languages, and are sometimes included with them in a single linguistic group, the Balto-Slavic. In their phonology, however, though not in their structure the Baltic languages appear to be more primitive than the Slavonic. Lithuanian, for example, retains the archaic diphthongs which disappear in Slavonic—Lith. ”

“ After we passed Koeningsburg near the Eytkunen limit of Lithuania, some persons, one of them in the uniform of a soldier, began to speak the Lithuanian language. I asked them who they were and they told me they were Lithuanian officials returning from Berlin.
As soon as we arrived at Eytkunen, the German inspector asked to see our passports, and seeing on mine no visa by the German authority, I was told to return to Berlin for the necessary signature. I informed him that the consul of Switzerland in New York put the visa on my passport, permitting me to cross Germany. ”

“ In Prussia the Crusaders forbade officials and all who approached the court to use the Lithuanian tongue, under penalty of death; they banished from the country, together with the Jews and gipsies, the Wajdelotes, or Lithuanian bards, who alone knew and could relate the national annals. Again in Lithuania, after the introduction of the Christian faith and the Polish language, the ancient priests and the native speech fell into disrepute, and were forgotten ”

“ But the name of Lithuanian provinces was usually given only to the governments of Vilna and Kovno, and, though Nicholas I. prohibited the use of this name, it is still used, even in official documents. In Russia, all the White-Russian population of the former Polish Lithuania are usually considered as Lithuanians, the name of Zhmud being restricted to Lithuanians proper. ”

“ In the Baltic languages the sun is feminine (Lithuanian sáule, Lettish sa'ule) , and the moon is masculine (Lithuanian měnů, Lettish menes) . The feminine Morning Star and Evening Star of the Lithuanians (Aušrìne, Vakarìnė) , however, appear among the Letts as masculine, the "sons of God" (Deewa dehli) , who, we shall see, woo the "Daughter of the Sun," whose Lithuanian suitor, as in the dainà just given, is the moon; 20yet, with the frequent inconsistency of myth, these feminine stars have masculine doublets in Lithuanian itself in the Dė̃vo sunélei, or "Sons of God." ”

“ The Lithuanian community in America publish newspapers, books, and dictionaries with an energy that betrays the influence of their new surroundings, yet the wholesale appropriation of necessary but inadequately assimilated Americanisms, together with prolonged absence from the secular traditions of the mother-country, must at an increasing rate lower the standard of linguistic purity. ”