Summary:
PROF. WEIGAND is well qualified for his task, and has written an extremely interesting work. He brings out one theory which will be novel to most readers, that the Albanians are not the descendants of the ancient Illyrians, but of the Bessi, a tribe of Thracians referred to by several chroniclers. He considers the former a maritime people, whose centre was in the north and west of the Balkans, where they may be traced in the Morlacchi of Zara, Cici of Istria, where the Latin speech still lingers on, and Venetians, all of whom are connected with the authors of the Messapian inscriptions of southern Italy. He thus makes Albanian the modern representative of the old Thracian language, which occupied a position intermediate between the Slavonic and Iranian groups. He considers that the ancient Thracians became thoroughly Romanised, and, with the exception of the Bessi, forgot their tongue; the fact that Bulgarian, Rumanian, and Albanian, although in no way related, all have a postfixed definite article, unknown in any other Latin or Slavonic tongue, he attributes to the influence of the old Thracian language, and adduces a whole series of analogous occurrences; numerous names of places and of plants are explained as survivors of the old tongue. As an example, we may quote Plovdiv as a Bulgarian corruption of the Thracian Pulpidava.