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In the introduction, the author points out the various philological problems relating to the texts in Old Biscayan (up to 1745) and he situates this essay within a wider field of studies concerned with solving them. He stresses the importance of the collections of proverbs that have been preserved, reflecting as they do states of the language prior to the date of collection; and he underlines the need to establish the collections' origins and autorship.
He puts forth in the first place the hypothesis of Urquijo (1908-9 and 1919), for whom whilst Collection B (= Cc 79 in the Madrid National Library) is Garibay's, Collection A (= G 139 in the MNL) is the work of a 17th century Guipuzcoan writer who used Garibay as a source for some material; in this case, the Refranes y sentencias (RS) of 1596 are, then, Garibay's other collection.
The author shows the weakness of Urquijo's reasoning, as well as the existence of important data, not taken into account by him, which demonstrates that both W (= original of A) and B are the work of Garibay; and that the Guipuzcoan who copied A hardly altered the original, nor included any material in A that was not in W. The RS are the work of another unknown author, very different of Garibay in graphic and linguistic usage.
In order to arrive at these conclusions, the author carries out a minute examination of the size of the collections, the testimony of the copier of A, the order of the proverbs in A and B and the implications of this, the language of both, the need to assume the use of a Biscayan original different to B in the making of A, and the linguistic and graphic affinity of W and B -this last being contrasted with the divergence of both texts from RS. This divergence is to be seen in the uses of h, sh, ç, and Ô for nasal vowels; the existence of a far higher number of archaisms in RS; and phonetic and morphological variations (uzen, daude, neuca, cidi and so on) which are accounted for by the more western origin of RS. The author ends by showing that there exist indications, both graphic and in the actual contents, leading one to suppose that B was the first collection made by Garibay and sent to Idiaquez, and that W was the second, made at the latter's request.
