Not less positive are the expressions of Father Diego Duran, contemporary of Sahagun, and himself well versed in the native tongue.  “All their songs,” he observes, “were composed in such obscure metaphors that scarcely any one can understand them unless he give especial attention to their construction."[36] The worthy Boturini was puzzled by those which he had collected, and writes, “the songs are difficult to explain, 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.