DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1117#0010
viii THE PALACE OF MINOS, ETC.
His Highland loyalty never failed, and the simple surroundings of his
earlier years gave him an inner understanding of the native workmen and
a fellow-feeling with them that was a real asset in the course of our spade-
work. To them, though a master, he was ever a true comrade. The lively
Cretan dances revived the ' reels' of his youth. No wedding ceremony, no
baptism, no wake was complete among the villagers without the sanction of
his presence, and as sponsor, godfather, or ' best man', his services were in
continual request. There yet fall on my inner ear the tones of that ' still
small voice'as he proposed the toast of a happy pair—with sly jocose
allusions, fluently spoken in the Cretan dialect of modern Greek—but not
without a trace of the soft Gaelic accent.
Even as these words return from the printers' hands there reaches me
from Italy the brief announcement that, a few days earlier, on August the
25th that vexed Spirit had found release at last.
Apart from this sad stroke—all too long delayed!—the passage of
the years itself has lately taken an untimely toll—even while the present
Volume was in hand—of those whom I could most look to for encourage-
ment and advice. Among them more than one of those who from the
very beginning of the work had aided and given a heartening welcome to
the results obtained have passed beyond mortal ken :
Zerstoben ist das freundliche Gedrange,
Verklungen, ach ! der erste Widerklang.
Already, when this Volume was well advanced, A. H. Sayce was
suddenly taken from us. It is hard to realize that that perennial source
of fresh enthusiasm for research and the advancement of knowledge has
ceased its up-springing. Much travelled scholar and first-hand student of
the monuments of Egypt and the East (while never, still, forgetting his
own Celtic and Iberic West), it had been owing to his interpretative genius
that the first real light was thrown on the Hittite problem, and the revelations
of Minoan Crete nearly concerned him. It is much to have enjoyed an
affectionate relationship with him for so many years, and to have shared
that quickening influence to the end. Here it may be recalled that in the
last days of his life, with faculties undimmed and the eager intellectual
curiosity of youth, he discussed with me the new evidence regarding the
Mainland Minoan script.
With him, too, H. R. Hall, most learned and serviceable guide,
His Highland loyalty never failed, and the simple surroundings of his
earlier years gave him an inner understanding of the native workmen and
a fellow-feeling with them that was a real asset in the course of our spade-
work. To them, though a master, he was ever a true comrade. The lively
Cretan dances revived the ' reels' of his youth. No wedding ceremony, no
baptism, no wake was complete among the villagers without the sanction of
his presence, and as sponsor, godfather, or ' best man', his services were in
continual request. There yet fall on my inner ear the tones of that ' still
small voice'as he proposed the toast of a happy pair—with sly jocose
allusions, fluently spoken in the Cretan dialect of modern Greek—but not
without a trace of the soft Gaelic accent.
Even as these words return from the printers' hands there reaches me
from Italy the brief announcement that, a few days earlier, on August the
25th that vexed Spirit had found release at last.
Apart from this sad stroke—all too long delayed!—the passage of
the years itself has lately taken an untimely toll—even while the present
Volume was in hand—of those whom I could most look to for encourage-
ment and advice. Among them more than one of those who from the
very beginning of the work had aided and given a heartening welcome to
the results obtained have passed beyond mortal ken :
Zerstoben ist das freundliche Gedrange,
Verklungen, ach ! der erste Widerklang.
Already, when this Volume was well advanced, A. H. Sayce was
suddenly taken from us. It is hard to realize that that perennial source
of fresh enthusiasm for research and the advancement of knowledge has
ceased its up-springing. Much travelled scholar and first-hand student of
the monuments of Egypt and the East (while never, still, forgetting his
own Celtic and Iberic West), it had been owing to his interpretative genius
that the first real light was thrown on the Hittite problem, and the revelations
of Minoan Crete nearly concerned him. It is much to have enjoyed an
affectionate relationship with him for so many years, and to have shared
that quickening influence to the end. Here it may be recalled that in the
last days of his life, with faculties undimmed and the eager intellectual
curiosity of youth, he discussed with me the new evidence regarding the
Mainland Minoan script.
With him, too, H. R. Hall, most learned and serviceable guide,