Note 12 — Basque Poetry.

But it has been very plausibly suggested12 that the verse bears a suspicious likeness to a vague reminiscence of the Moslem cry “Lâ Êlah Ulâ Allah!” &c.; and if so, this, in the north of Spain, would at one bound place the poem some eight centuries at least after the time of Augustus. The proper names have a too correct look. Octabiano, Roma, and Tiber are far too much like the Latin; for if Greeks and Romans complained, as do Strabo and Mela, of the difficulty of transcribing Basque or Iberian names into their own language, the Basques might possibly find a somewhat corresponding difficulty in transcribing Greek and Latin names into Basque. Moreover, in a later verse appears “Uchin,” a sobriquet for “Augustino,” as a baptismal name in use among the Spanish Basques to this day. What the poem really refers to we dare not assert. We present the “Leloaren Cantua” to our readers simply as one of the oldest curiosities of Basque verse, without pledging ourselves to any particular date or interpretation thereof.