The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ancient Nahuatl Poetry, by Daniel G. Brinton

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Title: Ancient Nahuatl Poetry
Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII.

Author: Daniel G. Brinton

Release Date: April 30, 2004 [EBook #12219]

Language: (English and Nahuatl)

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANCIENT NAHUATL POETRY ***

Produced by David Starner, GF Untermeyer and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team

[* Transcriber's note: The following substitutions have been made for
diacritical marks in the original text which are not available at DP:

For vowels with a breve: [)a], [)e], [)i], [)o], [)u].

For vowels with a macron: [=a], [=e], [=i], [=o], [=u]. *]

ANCIENT NAHUATL POETRY,

CONTAINING THE NAHUATL TEXT OF XXVII ANCIENT MEXICAN POEMS.

BRITON'S LIBRARY OF ABORIGINAL AMERICAN LITERATURE,

NUMBER VII.

WITH A TRANSLATION, INTRODUCTION, NOTES AND VOCABULARY.

BY

DANIEL G. BRINTON

1890

PREFACE.

It is with some hesitation that I offer this volume to the scientific
public. The text of the ancient songs which it contains offers
extreme and peculiar difficulties to the translator, and I have been
obliged to pursue the task without assistance of any kind. Not a line
of them has ever before been rendered into an European tongue, and my
endeavors to obtain aid from some of the Nahuatl scholars of Mexico
have, for various reasons, proved ineffectual. I am therefore alone
responsible for errors and misunderstandings.

Nevertheless, I have felt that these monuments of ancient native
literature are so interesting in themselves, and so worthy of
publication, that they should be placed at the disposition of
scholars in their original form with the best rendering that I could
give them at present, rather than to await the uncertain event of
years for a better.

The text itself may be improved by comparison with the original MS.
and with the copy previously made by the Licentiate Chimalpopoca,
referred to on page 48. My own efforts in this direction have been
confined to a faithful reproduction in print of the MS. copy of the
Abbe Brasseur de Bou