1.
My father has given me the dowry,
Mine, mine, mine;
A sow with her little pigs,
A brood hen with her chickens,
A cord of onions with them.
2.
The wolf has eaten my sow,
Mine, mine, mine;
The fox my brood hen,
The rats my cord of onions,
Good-bye, my dowry.
The lack of good poetry in Basque is certainly not due to want of
encouragement. Moreover, the wish to produce it is there, but the
power seems lacking. For over twenty years prizes have been annually
given, first at Urrugne, and then at Sare, by M. Antoine d'Abbadie,
of Abbadia. But among the multitude of competing poems few have been
of any real value, and both in merit and in the number presented they
seem to diminish annually. The best of them have been written by men
of the professional class, whose taste has been formed on French,
or Spanish, or classical, rather than on native models. The following
is considered by native critics to be among the best, though several
others are very little, if at all, inferior [209]:--