, because they mystify historical
facts with constant allegorizing,"[37] and Boturini's literary
executor, Don Mariano Echevarria y Veitia, who paid especial
attention to the poetic fragments he had received, says frankly: "The
fact is, that as to the songs I have not found a person who can fully
translate them, because there are many words in them whose
signification is absolutely unknown to-day, and moreover which do not
appear in the vocabularies of Molina or others."[38]

The Abbe Clavigero speaks in somewhat more definite terms of the
poetic forms and licenses of the language. He notes that in the
fragments of the ancient verses which had been preserved until his
day there were inserted between the significant words certain
interjections and meaningless syllables, apparently to fill out the
metre. Nevertheless, he considered the language of the chants, "pure,
pleasant, brilliant, figurative and replete with allusions to the
more pleasing objects in nature, as flowers, trees, brooks, etc."[39]
It is quite evident from the above extracts that in the translation
of the ancient songs in the present volume we must be prepared for
serious difficulties, the more so as the Nahuatl language, in the
opinion of some who are the best acquainted with it, lends itself
with peculiar facility to ambiguities of expression and obscure
figures of speech.[40] Students of American ethnology are familiar
with the fact that in nearly all tribes the language of the sacred
songs differs materially from that in daily life.

Of the older grammarians, Father Carochi alone has left us actual
specimens of the ancient poetic dialect, and his observations are
regretably brief. They occur in his chapter on the composition of
nouns and read as follows:[41]--

"The ancient Indians were chary in forming compounds of more than two
words, while those of to-day exceed this number, especially if they
speak of sacred things; although in their poetic dialect the ancients
were also extravagant in this respect, as the following examples
show:--

1. Tl[=a]uhquech[=o]llaztal[=e]hualto t[=o]natoc.

1. It is gleaming red like the tlauhquechol bird.

2. Ayauhcocam[=a]l[=o]t[=o]nam[=e]yotimani.

2. And it glows like the rainbow.

3. Xiuhcoyolizitzilica in te[=o]cuitlahu[=e]hu[=e]tl.

3. The silver drum sounds like bells of turquoise.

4. Xiuhtlapallacuil[=o]l[=a]moxtli manca.

4. There was a book of annals written and painted in colors.

5. Nic ch[