SERVIAN SONG.^[380]

PASSAGES FROM SEVERAL RUSSIAN BALLADS.

current at the present day.

I.

The Bohemians preserved their nationality, and very probably with it their ancient popular songs, down to the seventeenth century. During the thirty years' war, of which Bohemia was in part almost uninterruptedly the seat, a complete revolution in manners, institutions, and localities, took place. Whole villages emigrated, or were driven into the wide world, wandering about in scattered groups as fugitives and mendicants. Most of the ancient songs may have died at that time. The German influence increased rapidly during the remainder of the seventeenth century, mostly by force and reluctantly; still more during the[pg.389] eighteenth century by habit, intermarriages, education, etc. The Bohemians, the most musical nation in the world, are still a singing people; but many of their ditties are evidently borrowed from the German; in others, invented by themselves, they exhibit a spirit entirely different from that of their ancestors. These modern songs are mostly rhymed. The following specimen of songs still current among the peasantry of Bohemia, will show well the harmless, playful, roguish spirit that pervades them.

THE FORSAKEN MAIDEN.

LIBERAL PAY.

HAPPY DEATH.

THE LYING BIRD.

In the following fine ballad the German influence is manifest. It is extant in two different texts. We give it in Bowring's version, which has less of amplification and embellishment than is usual in English translations.

THE DEAD LOVE.

The Slovaks, the Slavic inhabitants of the north-western districts of Hungary, are considered, as we have seen above, as the direct descendants of the first Slavic settlers in Europe. Although for nearly a thousand years past they have formed a component part of the Hungarian nation, they have nevertheless preserved their language and many of their ancient customs. Their literature, we know, is not to be separated from that of the Bohemians. Their popular effusions are original; although, likewise, between them and the popular poetry of their Bohemian brethren, a close affinity cannot be denied. The Slovaks are said to be still exceedingly rich in pretty and artless songs, both pensive and cheerful; but the original Slavic type is now very much effaced from them. The surrounding nations, and above all the Germans, have exercised a decided and lasting influence upon them.

The following ballads are still heard among the Slovaks. The first of them is also extant in an imperfect German shape. As the coarse dialect, in which the German ballad may be heard, is that of the "Kuhländchen," a small district of Silesia, where the Slavic neighbourhood has not been without influence, we have no doubt that the more complete Slavic ballad is the original.

The reader will perceive that these Slovakian songs are rhymed. There are however also rhymeless verses extant among them; the measure of which seems to indicate a greater antiquity, and brings them nearer to the nations of the Eastern stock.^[382]

Of all the Slavic nations, the POLES, as we have already remarked, had most neglected their popular poetry. There were indeed several collections of popular ballads published, partly by Polish editors, with the title of popular poetry in Poland. But they all, without exception, so far as we know, refer to the Ruthenian peasantry in Poland, who use a language different from the Polish, and essentially the same as the Malo-Russian. These tribes, inhabitants of Poland for centuries, may indeed be[pg.395] called Poles with perfect propriety. Yet this name is in a more limited sense applied to the Lekhian race exclusively; and it is in respect to them that we remarked above, that their songs had been collected for the first time only a few years ago.^[383]

That they also had national ballads of their own could hardly be a matter of doubt; and the neglect may easily be explained, in a nation among whom all that has any reference to mere boors and serfs has always been regarded with the utmost contempt. Their beautiful national dances, however, known all over the world, the graceful Polonaise, the bold Masur, the ingenious Cracovienne, are just as much the property of the peasantry, as of the nobility. Their dances were formerly always accompanied by singing; just as it was customary in olden times every where, and as it is still the usage among the Russian and Servian peasantry, to dance to the music of song instead of instruments. But these songs are always extemporized; and in Poland probably were never written down. The early refinement of the language secured to the upper classes a greater or lesser share in their national literature, which gave them apparently better things; although we have seen above, that, far from developing itself from its own resources, their literature was alternately ingrafted on a Latin, Italian, or French stock. Among the country gentry, and even at the convivial parties of the nobility, the custom of extemporizing songs, probably full of national reminiscences, continued even down to the beginning of our own century. Very little stress was naturally laid upon them; since the interest for all that is national, historical, or in any way connected with the people, belongs only to the most recent times. In our day, the local scenes of Lithuania have excited some interest, and the Ukraine has become the favourite theatre of Polish poets.[pg.396]

The Polish nation has an ancient hymn, which may be said to belong in some measure to popular poetry. It is known under the name of Boga Rodzica, or God's Mother; and is said to have been composed by St. Adalbert, who lived at the end of the tenth century. According to Niemcewicz, the Polish poet, it was still chanted in the year 1812 in the churches of Kola and Gnesen, the places where St. Adalbert lived and died. It is a prayer to the Virgin, ending with a sixfold Amen; and was formerly sung by the soldiers when advancing to battle. For that reason probably we find it frequently called a war song.

The popular ballads, published by Woicicki and Zegota Pauli, are not distinguished in any way from those still extant among the Slovakians, Bohemians, and Lusatian Sorabians. It can only be matter of surprise, that they have imbibed no more of the wild and romantic character of the ballads sung by the Ruthenians, with whom they live intermingled in several regions. They are ruder in form; and alternately rhymed, or distinguished from prose only by a certain irregular but prosodic measure, sometimes trochaic, but mostly dactylic. With the classical beauty of the Servian songs they can bear no comparison; in which latter the perfect absence of vulgarity may perhaps be partly accounted for, by their having been produced among a people where no privileged classes exist. Only in their wedding songs, and other similar ones, is there a striking affinity; it is in general in these relics of ancient times, that the popular poetry of the nations of the Eastern and of the Western Stems meet in one distinct and fundamental accord.

Many of the more ancient ballads extant among the Poles we find also in one or other of the Western Slavic languages. For example, the following; which exists in the Vendish language in a shape more diffuse and twice as long; and also in Slovakian, still more sketchlike. That the Polish ballad is derived from a time, when the horrid invasions of the Tartars[pg.397] were at least still distinctly remembered, we may safely conclude. In the Slovakian ballad the invaders are called Turks; in the Vendish ballad, probably the latest of the three, they have lost all individual nationality, and have become merely "enemies," or "robbers."