Note 369 — Chapter V · [1814-1817.]

Besides the Sette Communi of Vicenza, there are also thirteen parishes in the province of Verona, called the Tredici Communi;—evidently of the same Teutonic stock, and a remnant of the same Roman slaughter. Adelung (II., 215) gives a specimen of each language. Both are perfectly intelligible to any German scholar: but that of Verona resembles more nearly the modern form of the German language. The affinity is much more closely preserved in both, than it is in the analogous instance of the Roman colony in Transylvania. I may be permitted to refer to the very similar example of an isolated race and language which subsisted among ourselves down to the last generation, in the Baronies of Forth and Bargie in the county of Wexford in Ireland. The remnant of the first English or Welsh adventurers under Strongbow, who obtained lands in that district, maintained themselves, through a long series of generations, distinct in manners, usages, costume, and even language, both from the Irish population, and, what is more remarkable, from the English settlers of all subsequent periods. An essay on their peculiar dialect, with a vocabulary and a metrical specimen, by Vallancey, will be found in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, Vol. II. (Antiquities), pp. 194-3.