LIETUVIŲ KALBOTYROS KLAUSIMAI, XXXIV (1994)

LIETUVIŲ KALBOS TARMĖS IR JŲ TYRINĖJIMAI

From the Archives From the Archives

Zigmas ZINKEVIČIUS

LITHUANIAN INSCRIPTIONS IN A COPY OF ”KNYGOS NOBAŽNYSTĖS”

The copy of ”Knygos nobažnystės” (1653) held at the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania in Vilnius, with the call number A 1/653, contains the handwritten Lithuanian text of two prayers. I briefly mentioned it in volume IV of my ”History of the Lithuanian Language” ¹. Otherwise, it has not been discussed or examined in any detail by linguists.

A photocopy and transcription of it are provided ²:

¹ Zinkevičius Z. History of the Lithuanian Language, IV: The Lithuanian Language in the 18th–19th Centuries. Vilnius: Mokslas, 1990, pp. 186–187.

² Because of technical printing limitations, ž is printed instead of the letter z with a crossed stroke.

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1 Glory to God on high and peace on earth. Good will toward people. We praise, glorify and honor you, great God, eternal Son, eternal Father, Lord Jesus Christ, who came from the heavenly throne to this earth for our sake, and [with us through the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, [became one with us and deigned to bear our suffering as sinners. Grant us, 10 our dear Savior, that, being grateful, we may greatly do good to you, love you sincerely, trust in you, serve you faithfully, follow you diligently, and 15 in life and death steadfastly rely on you; for you yourself are Lord, Head, Shepherd, Ruler, Overseer, Savior, Mediator and Advocate,

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for us, unworthy servants, what is most perfect of yours, with your Father and with the Spirit. With God, praise unto eternity. Amen.

II

1

Lord Jesus X^ste, our Saviour. Our perfect righteousness, we thank you wholeheartedly that you deigned to come from the heights of heaven into this wretched world and to draw near to us: you became our flesh and blood, sinners not on your own account, for you had glory with your Father before the world was created, but on our account, so that in our troubles you might faithfully help us as a friend, and so that you might seek us, your lost sheep, and call us sinners to repentance. We beseech you, through your coming into the world, make us participants in your righteousness and most precious merit; save us from sin, all evil, the power of Satan, and eternal damnation. O great Lord of the eternal Covenant of God, Lord Jesus, clothe us in divine righteousness, so that we may be counted among the righteous and be able to live in God’s Kingdom forever. Amen

5

10

15

A copy of “Knygos nobažnystės” containing the prayer inscriptions came to the Martynas Mažvydas National Library from the Vilnius Evangelical Reformed Synod. This is indicated by several synod seals and an inscription on the reverse of the title page, written in another hand: Bibl. Synodi Evang.-Reform. Viln. Cat. I. D. №. 777. q. On the same page, it seems, another hand also wrote in Polish: Od Ksiądża Kielmeńskiego Zboru Konstantego Thumasa. 1880 r. 15 dnia Marca Kielmy. Thus, on 15 March 1880, the Vilnius Synod received the book from the Kelmė Reformed pastor Konstantinas Tumas (Tumaso? 1877—1903³).

The texts of both prayers are inscribed at the end of the book, on blank leaves bound in with it. The copy also has more blank leaves: there are nine before the printed text (something was written on the reverse of the first leaf, apparently a fragment of a table of contents, but in a different dialect and by someone other than the person who inscribed the prayers; there are also further short inscriptions, but they are in Polish); after the printed text there are as many as 39 blank leaves. The prayers are inscribed on the first two leaves following the printed text.

Both prayers were written by the same person, in black ink that has now faded considerably. The text’s spelling is rather archaic; compare the letters ſ, ſs (= s), ſz (= š), ey, wy (=ei, ui). The text is written in the Eastern Aukštaitian dialect. The tautosyllabic combinations with an are narrowed, for example, unt I 1, 2, 6, 20, II 3, 19 ‘ant’ [on], brungus I 10 ‘brangus’ [dear], gen. sg. fem. brungiausios II 13 ‘brangiausios’ [most precious], Dunguiiejżkos II 3—4 ‘dangiškos’ [heavenly]; umżinas I 4 ‘amžinas’ [eternal], gen. sg. masc. umżina I 4, II 15, 16 ‘amžino’ [of eternity], gen. pl. umżiu I 20, II 19 ‘amžių’ [of ages]; giwint II 19 ‘gyventi’ [to live], 2nd sg. imperative apding

³ Grūzewski B. Kościół Ewangelicko-reformowany w Kielmach. Warszawa, 1912, p. 421.

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II 17 ‘apdenk’ [cover]. However: idant I 10, II 8, 10, 18, gen. sg. masc. paſkandinima II 15—16 ‘paskandinimo’ [of damnation].

Word-final ą, ę and -a, -e, < *-ą, *-ę have not become -ų, -į or -u, -i, respectively; for example, acc. sg. garbą II 6 ‘garbę’ [honor], Tewą II 6—7 ‘tėvą’ [father], Sprową I 7 ‘dalyką, reikalą’ [thing, matter], nom. sg. masc. gimes I 8 ‘gimęs’ [born]; instr. sg. Gatwa I 17, teysibe Diewiſzka II 17—18, loc. sg. Žiwate I 15 ‘gyvenimas’ [life]. This points us toward localities in northeastern Lithuania between Pasvalys and Vaškai. The hard t before an e-type vowel likewise does not contradict this conclusion, but supports it (a); so do the unstressed ending -a < *-ā instead of standard-language -o and the presence of long ā in stressed monosyllabic words alongside the unstressed ending -os (b); as do the assimilation of the components of a circumflex diphthong and their notation with the letters ey (c), for example:

a) 2nd sg. conditional galetumey II 11 ‘tu galėtum’ [you could], 1st pl. miletumim I 12 ‘mes mylėtume’ [we would love];

b) gen. sg. masc. kuna II 5 ‘kūno’ [of the body], grieka II 14 ‘nuodėmės’ [of sin], wiſa pikta II 15 ‘viso pikto’ [of all evil], warga I 8 ‘vargo’ [of suffering], and ta II 3 ‘to’ [of that], but fem. brungiausios II 13 ‘brangiausios’ [of the most precious];

c) patsey I 16 ‘patsai’ [oneself], tikrey I 13 ‘tikrai’ [truly], dukſingey I 15—16 ‘dūksingai, su viltimi’ [devoutly, hopefully], instr. pl. masc. nuodelnikejs II 13 ‘dalyviais’ [participants], nom. pl. masc. paskeytiti II 18 ‘paskaityti, palaikyti’ [to count, regard as].

Also compare acc. pl. mums II 11, 14 ‘mus’ [us].

The text contains archaic forms no longer used in the region indicated or in Lithuania generally, for example, dat. pl. Žmonemus I 2 ‘žmonėms’ [to people], allative sg. pakutosp II 11, adessive sg. Tawimp I 12—13, gen. sg. fem. Danguieįzkos II 4, 2nd sg. conditional padetumbey II 9, 1st pl. galetumbim II 19. These point to the sixteenth–seventeenth centuries.

Above the text of the first prayer is a Polish heading (see the photocopy), which should be read as follows: Modl(itwa) V na B(oż)e Narodzenie. Thus, this prayer bears the number five (in Roman numerals). In the “Knygos nobažnystės” prayer book, an entirely different prayer is listed as number 5; the one inscribed here is therefore not its translation into the Eastern Aukštaitian dialect. There is no prayer in “Knygoje nobažnystės” at all that corresponds to the manuscript text. However, our attention is drawn to the new prayer numbers written by hand in this copy, among which there is no number 5. Apparently, the text comes from another prayer collection, whose table of contents listed the prayers by number. Upon checking the more extensive prayer collections published by the Evangelical Reformed Church in 1781 and 1845⁴, a prayer numbered 5 was found—the very one inscribed in “Knygoje nobažnystės.” The spelling is similar: the letter ſ (= s) is used; β appears here instead of ſz (= š), and ź instead of ż; the letters representing diphthongs are ay, ey, uy only in the 1781 edition, while the 1845 edition uses aj, ej, uj. Conditional forms with -b- occur only in the 1781 edition, whereas the 1845 collection has miletumim, dukſetumim, tarnauutumim. The language is characteristic of the middle variant of our old written language; accordingly, the text of these editions has ant, brangus, amžinas, amžių, tikray, and so on. The text was copied (with dialectal changes!) not entirely word for word, and some changes were made; the most important are these:

⁴ Maldos krikszczioniszkos, Wiſokioj Reykmej prigulinčzios...Karálaucʒuje... MDCCLXXXI (=1781 m.). The copy at Vilnius University Library, shelfmark Lᴿ 965, was used. For 1845, the copy at Vilnius University was used, shelfmark Lᴿ 695.

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In the 1781 collection (the 1845 version differs only in spelling):

A good desire in a person, Lord our Jesus Christ, that from Thy divine throne in the heights of heaven, and from the toil and distress of sinful people, [we may] truly turn to Thee, that we may serve Thee faithfully [and] worship Thee alone, and live a perfect life in Thee

In the manuscript:

A good will toward people, Lord Jesus Christ, that from Thy fatherly throne in the heights, and from the toil of our sinners, [we may] turn to Thee, that we may serve Thee diligently [and] worship Thee alone, living a life as perfect as possible in Thee

The second prayer was not found at all in the reformed prayer collections examined.

We cannot be certain that the person who entered the prayers in “Knygos nobažnystės” used precisely the editions cited. Most likely there was some other, now-lost collection of prayers, possibly a manuscript written in the Eastern Aukštaitian dialect, from which they were copied. As the evidence presented below indicates, this was most likely done in the late eighteenth or first half of the nineteenth century. The existing archaic forms, uncharacteristic of the language of that period, may simply have been copied from an older collection.

Among the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century manuscripts of the Kelmė Reformed community preserved in the University of Warsaw Library, ⁵ sermons written in the same hand ⁶ have been found. The spelling and language (dialect) of the Warsaw text ⁷ are the same as those of the prayers under consideration. Here too the letters ł, ſ (ſ = š), ſz (= š), ey, uy (= ei, ui) are used. The tautosyllabic an-type combinations are narrowed, e.g., unt ‘on’, accusative singular Dungu ‘heaven’, adverb prideruncziey ‘appropriately’, ſziendien ‘today’, but idant. In the endings ą, ę and -a, -e < *-ǭ, *-ę, -ų, į and respectively -u, -i remain unchanged, e.g., accusative singular gatwą, prieſz Sostą, ape atpirkimą, su meyłą ‘with love’, locative singular žiwate ‘life’. Hard l before e-type vocalism: ſekle ‘seed’ (characteristic of the northern Eastern Aukštaitians!), meyte ‘love’, Guteja ‘lay’, conditional third-person plural galetumim ‘we could’. The distribution of vowels ā and o in the forms cited is the same; compare genitive singular masculine Diewa ‘of God’, ſwieta ‘of the world’, ant zienkla ‘on the sign’, and ta ‘that’, ja ‘his’ alongside the ending -ios. Also compare the marking of circumflex ai: kursey ‘courses’, sztey ‘here’, dayktey ‘things’, su wyſtikleyſ ‘with swaddling clothes’, Labey ‘very’... Archaic forms are abundant: dative singular masculine kuriamay ‘to whom’, adessive singular Diewiep, allative singular Tewop, plural musump, nominative plural masculine Danguieſzki ‘heavenly’, locative plural Dunguieſzkose, te eſt ‘still’, adverb Todrin ‘therefore’, nesang ‘because’... There is no doubt that the Warsaw text was written by the same person who entered both prayers in “Knygos nobažnystės”.

It was not possible to establish who this person was. Aleksandras Močiulskis is named among the authors of the Warsaw Kelmė Reformed collection. Most likely this

⁵Historian Ingė Lukšaitė brought them to the article’s author’s attention. She kindly allowed him to use the notes and microfilms she had made. Heartfelt thanks to her!

⁶ Tai patvirtino LTSR Teismo ekspertizės mokslinio tyrimo institutas 1981.10.16 pažyma Nr. 11—1280.

⁷In the collection entitled ”Zbiór kazań polskich i litewskich z lat 1742—1812 i niedatowanych”, old shelfmark 1148, new shelfmark 1268.

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The well-known editor of Evangelical Reformed publications Aleksandras Rapolas Močiulskis (1790—1866), born in Kelmė and employed there for some time. I was inclined to think that the text was most likely in his own hand ⁸. However, at my request, Pawel’s Wójcik, a student at the University of Warsaw who had undertaken a placement at Vilnius University in the 1992/1993 academic year, checked the Warsaw manuscript collection and found no evidence in it to support this view ⁹. The collection contains texts written by Aleksandras and Adomas (most likely Adomas Jokūbas, 1749—1832) Močiulskis, as well as by Aleksandras Meškauskas (Mieszkowski), but the handwriting of all of them differs from that of the Warsaw writer of interest to us (including the prayers entered in ”Knygoje nobažnystės”).

In any case, the prayers in ”Knygos nobažnystės” were entered by someone who worked in Kelmė or was at least connected with the Evangelical Reformed community there. The community’s ministers were often transferred from Biržai or went to work in Biržai (both the aforementioned Aleksandras Rapolas and Adomas Jokūbas Močiulskis worked in these two places); therefore, it should not surprise us to find a text in the East Aukštaitian dialect of the Biržai region among the Reformed manuscripts from Kelmė.

In the early nineteenth century, the Reformed community used the dialect of the Biržai region when publishing religious writings. This is shown by both booklets by Mykolas Ceraskis ¹⁰, born around 1754, probably in Nemunėlio Radviliškis, who worked in Biržai from 1784 until his death in 1824, and published in Mintauja in 1803: ”Kozonis padėkavonės” and ”Senas katekizmas”. The first booklet consists throughout principally of the dialect that concerns us (with the traditional admixture of the written language of the period), e.g., wundeni ‘in water’, ſwenti ‘holy’, ka ‘what’, ta ‘that’, weykey ‘children’, tie linksmus paukszcziey ‘those cheerful birds’ (lińksmūs). The introduction to the second booklet is written in essentially the same language, but the language of the prayers and other catechetical material in it is traditional, continuing the mid-sixteenth- to seventeenth-century variant of the written language.

The M. Mažvydas Library holds a photocopy of the manuscript book by an unknown author, ”Būdas apie vakarienę (rašo vakarine) pono mūsų Jezuso Christuso” (undated), whose text is in the same dialect as that of M. Ceraskis, e.g., wundo ‘water’, pinkiu ‘five’, ku ‘what’, stalu ‘table’, giesmi ‘song’, ta ‘that’, prastus ‘simple’ (prastūs), rejki ‘needed’. It was written not by M. Ceraskis (the handwriting is different), but by yet another person. It also abounds in archaisms, e.g., nesang ‘because’, betaig ‘but’, kiekwienamuy ‘to everyone’, idant turetumbime ‘so that we might have’.

In Vilnius, Juozas Tumelis has a bundle of sermons and hymns (received in 1968 from Leonas Gudaitis), which the artist Kazys Šimonis assembled into a single collection in 1925—1940, having bought the manuscripts in Biržai from an antiquities collector named Štreitenas (Štreitonas?). This is a fairly substantial collection of 284 pages of manuscript Reformed texts from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The oldest dated text is from 1726. There may be still older, undated ones. The writers are unknown, except for the author of the 1813 text—the aforementioned M. Ceraskis. Many of the texts in this collection are written in the traditional

⁸ Zinkevičius Z. History of the Lithuanian Language, IV, p. 187.

⁹ I would like to thank P. Wójcik for his work and for providing additional copies of the texts.

¹⁰ It is thought that the actual surname was Vaškys, rendered into Latin by his ancestors as Ceraski, which our bibliographers then turned into Cerauskas.

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the language of the writings, but with very numerous features of the Eastern Aukštaitian dialect. A considerable number of features (even in the oldest texts themselves) point us to the northern part of the Mūša basin, especially the Biržai area, e.g., ja ‘his’, ta ‘that’, re(j)ki ‘is needed’, pawerči ‘turns into’, sekte ‘seed’, trumpus ‘short’ (= trumpūs), kitas asz ira ‘I am someone else’. There are many traces of the old written language, e.g., nopikontontoy ‘in hatred’, dewintam liekam paguldime ‘in the nineteenth chapter’, zwetamu ‘holy’, kunigamus ‘to the priests’, poniep, mu|impi, dangueie|zkas ‘heavenly’, butumbim ‘we would be’. Apparently, at least some of these texts were copied from older manuscripts or printed editions unknown to us.

In 1948, while leafing through a copy of Morkūnas’s Reformation postil held in the library of Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, I noticed its unusual binding: the spine had been covered with scraps of an old Lithuanian manuscript. The language of their text resembled the eastern variant of the written language. I copied down the following words: umži ‘of ages’, baysas ‘frightening’, teyp ‘so’, kayp ‘how’, niey ‘than’. Unfortunately, it is no longer possible to study the language of those scraps: the copy entered the Vilnius University Library (its new shelfmark is Lᴿ 1620) and was restored, and the old scraps from the spine are gone.

As we know, in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 16th–17th centuries, books were published in two variants of the written language: the so-called central variant (whose beginnings lay in the dialect of the central Lithuanian plains—the Kėdainiai region) and the eastern variant (which originated in the dialect of Vilnius and its immediate surroundings). Catholic books were published in both variants: those written in the former were intended for the Samogitian diocese, while those written in the latter served the needs of the Vilnius diocese. The Reformed, however, published books only in the central variant. There is not a single book, nor even a manuscript Reformed text, from the 16th–17th centuries written in the eastern variant of the written language. This is rather surprising, since at that time people of the Reformed (Calvinist) faith lived not only in western and central Lithuania (the Samogitian district), but also in eastern Lithuania, in the Vilnius and Užneris ¹¹ (Biržai, Panevėžys, Naujamiestis, Papilys, Ukmergė, Utena, Zarasai...) districts.

All the evidence presented in this article calls for at least a partial revision of the view that the Reformed had long used only the central variant of the written language. Apparently, they also wrote in the eastern variant; it is simply that no books written in it were printed, or none of those printed have survived.

Apparently, not without reason, in the first half of the 19th century Kazimieras Kristupas Daukša (born about 1795, died 1865), a teacher at the Biržai Reformed school, took the Eastern Aukštaitian dialect as the basis for his handwritten Lithuanian grammar (the first grammar written in Lithuanian!), ”Trumpa kalbamokslie liežuvių lietuviško”; indeed, he relied chiefly on the speech of the Biržai region (he himself came from there). He created a distinctive standard written language based on Eastern Aukštaitian ¹². His son, Edvardas Jokūbas Daukša (1836–about 1890), also used it, after revising and simplifying the orthography. Apparently, the lost work written before 1860 by the Biržai Reformed pastor Karolis was also in Eastern Aukštaitian.

Litwa Zawilejska. For the term and its extent, see Wojtkowiak Z. Litwa Zawilejska w XV i pierwszej połowie XVI w., Poznań, 1980.

¹² Plačiau žr. Zinkevičius Z. Lietuvių kalbos istorija, IV, Vilnius, 1990, p. 190—192.

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Nerlicho (1808 – 1860) gramatika. Taigi rytų aukštaičių tarmė reformato raštijoje yra atlikusi kur kas didesnį vaidmenį, negu paprastai manoma.

LITHUANIAN INSCRIPTIONS IN A COPY OF ”KNYGA NOBAŽNYSTĖS”

Summary

The article analyses the handwritten text of two prayers found in a copy of ”Knyga nobažnystės” kept in the M. Mažvydas Library in Vilnius. It was established that the inscription had been made by an evangelist reformist priest, a native of the district of Biržai, who worked in Kelme. Texts written by the same person can be found in the collection of manuscripts of the reformists of Kelme, at the library of Warszaw University. These texts are supposed to have been copied out of some old prayer book either of the end of the 18th or the beginning of the 19th century. This text is written in the East High Lithuanian dialect. The linguistic peculiarities of the Biržai region can be seen easily. The facts presented show that the East High Lithuanian dialect played a much more important role in the writings of the reformists than it was supposed before.

FOUR LETTERS FROM K. BŪGA TO TORI TORBIÖRNSSON

In May–June 1992, I worked in the library and archive of the Slavist and Balticist T. Torbiörnsson, located in the Department of Slavic Studies at Lund University (Sweden). There I met Georg Jaugelis, a former member of the department’s staff, who mentioned during one conversation that he had transcribed four letters from K. Būga to T. Torbiörnsson, intending to publish them. The original Russian-language letters, together with other correspondence and manuscripts, had for some time been kept in T. Torbiörnsson’s archive.

G. Jaugelis had typed the letters, added the diacritical marks, and reproduced the underlining. Only the yat (ь), which was not available on the typewriter, and the Latin letter z in some Russian words were left unentered. The proof-reading could not be completed because of an illness that kept G. Jaugelis bedridden for a considerable time. After he returned from the hospital, it turned out that the original letters had disappeared somewhere (despite carefully checking T. Torbiörnsson’s archive and the catalogue of the Manuscripts Department of Lund University Library, I too was unable to find them). As the originals could not be located, the letters remained unfinished for publication and unpublished.

Although the transcripts of the letters had not been fully prepared for publication, they can be relied upon (for one or two doubtful details, see the Notes). G. Jaugelis was regarded as one of the best proofreaders and editors of the publications of the Institute of Slavic Studies; moreover, he had prepared a substantial collection of letters by Russian writers to the Slavists in Lund in exemplary fashion (see Slavica Lundensia, 1973. Vol. 1, p. 115–140; 1974. Vol. 2, p. 7–116). I would like to thank G. Jaugelis for permission to make copies of the transcripts and publish them in the Lithuanian press.

^* For information about T. Torbiörnsson’s library and archive, see Stundžia B. Lituanistika Lundo universitete // Gimtoji kalba, 1992, Nr. 11. P. 21–25.

The research work at the aforementioned library and archive was funded through the mediation of the Swedish Institute (Svenska Institutet) by the Nordic Council of Ministers; the foreign-currency portion of the travel expenses was paid by the Open Lithuania Fund.

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